I agree that Bevins’ book ‘The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade & the Mass Murder Campaign that Shaped Our World’ (New York: PublicAffairs/Hachette, 2020) is essential reading. Even if you think you understand what happened in Indonesia in 1965 (with U.S. government, military, and CIA backing) this book will shock you to the core. Bevins also illustrates how the “method” used in Indonesia in 1965 was used as a model for the right-wing in Chile in 1973. Bevins has been a reporter for the Financial Times, The Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post. He speaks Indonesian, Portuguese, and Spanish -- a true journalist in my opinion.
Ironically, this view indulges a paternalistic regard for the Indonesians, as though they are incapable of having home-grown corruption and tyranny on their own, but it must be imposed upon them by the Evil White West.
I did not reveal any particular “view.” The book ‘The Jakarta Method’ is filled with facts. You can read the book and then judge whether the author has a “paternalistic regard for Indonesians.” Nobody would dispute that there was “home-grown corruption” before 1965 under the leadership of Sukarno, especially in the military, which Sukarno could not control. But the real “tyranny” began in 1965 with a military coup lead by Suharto. The coup was clearly planned with the support of the CIA and the U.S. government and military. Between 500 thousand and a million people were slaughtered -- admittedly often chopped to pieces by machetes. Thousands more were put in concentration camps for years. Much of this historical information comes from U.S. State Department documents. Read the book -- be informed.
The US opportunistically helping one side because it was perceived as anti-Communist and then that side through the psychopathology of its indigenous culture massacres people chopping them into pieces through the weird cultural phenomenon of "running amok" does not legitimize Western Leftists spinning it so that the Evil American Empire was directly responsible. You Leftists have a perverse habit of ignoring the brutality of non-Western cultures and obsessing about America and the White West in general.
You make a mistake by lumping me together with all Leftists. I spend little time “obsessing about America and the White West in general.” What I’ve worried about since the late 1960s is the U.S. government meddling in the affairs of other nations. This is what our founding fathers (Washington, Madison, et al) and John Quincey Adams warned against. The story of Indonesia in 1965 is a wee bit more complex than just “running amok.” In an interesting use of quasi-fascist mass psychological propaganda (which was brilliant in a twisted way), the military convinced the people to massacre one another. You need to read the book to understand this. It's fascinating and frightening.
My problem with the radical Leftist critique of America is it ignores the Communist project of subversion throughout the 20th century (or worse, actually supports it), and thence fails to factor in the anti-Communist origins of the CIA & FBI, which we reasonably then infer implies a transformation of those institutions (and most other sociopolitical institutions as well) from anti-Communist to crypto-Communist saboteurs. I.e., at some point, the CIA & FBI (and most other sociopolitical institutions as well) were captured by Communists. The question is when this occurred. One complication to this question is that the "when" is likely not a specific moment in time, but an ongoing process which still is not complete now, but is on a trajectory toward success.
One of us is making a fool of himself in public. Since I was a professor of pediatrics at a major medical school (far from the Beltway) before I retired in 2011, I can’t help but make this a teachable moment. Allow me to direct you to two sources of foreign policy opinion that tend be libertarian and not “radical left critique:”
I agree that Bevins’ book ‘The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade & the Mass Murder Campaign that Shaped Our World’ (New York: PublicAffairs/Hachette, 2020) is essential reading. Even if you think you understand what happened in Indonesia in 1965 (with U.S. government, military, and CIA backing) this book will shock you to the core. Bevins also illustrates how the “method” used in Indonesia in 1965 was used as a model for the right-wing in Chile in 1973. Bevins has been a reporter for the Financial Times, The Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post. He speaks Indonesian, Portuguese, and Spanish -- a true journalist in my opinion.
Ironically, this view indulges a paternalistic regard for the Indonesians, as though they are incapable of having home-grown corruption and tyranny on their own, but it must be imposed upon them by the Evil White West.
I did not reveal any particular “view.” The book ‘The Jakarta Method’ is filled with facts. You can read the book and then judge whether the author has a “paternalistic regard for Indonesians.” Nobody would dispute that there was “home-grown corruption” before 1965 under the leadership of Sukarno, especially in the military, which Sukarno could not control. But the real “tyranny” began in 1965 with a military coup lead by Suharto. The coup was clearly planned with the support of the CIA and the U.S. government and military. Between 500 thousand and a million people were slaughtered -- admittedly often chopped to pieces by machetes. Thousands more were put in concentration camps for years. Much of this historical information comes from U.S. State Department documents. Read the book -- be informed.
The US opportunistically helping one side because it was perceived as anti-Communist and then that side through the psychopathology of its indigenous culture massacres people chopping them into pieces through the weird cultural phenomenon of "running amok" does not legitimize Western Leftists spinning it so that the Evil American Empire was directly responsible. You Leftists have a perverse habit of ignoring the brutality of non-Western cultures and obsessing about America and the White West in general.
You make a mistake by lumping me together with all Leftists. I spend little time “obsessing about America and the White West in general.” What I’ve worried about since the late 1960s is the U.S. government meddling in the affairs of other nations. This is what our founding fathers (Washington, Madison, et al) and John Quincey Adams warned against. The story of Indonesia in 1965 is a wee bit more complex than just “running amok.” In an interesting use of quasi-fascist mass psychological propaganda (which was brilliant in a twisted way), the military convinced the people to massacre one another. You need to read the book to understand this. It's fascinating and frightening.
My problem with the radical Leftist critique of America is it ignores the Communist project of subversion throughout the 20th century (or worse, actually supports it), and thence fails to factor in the anti-Communist origins of the CIA & FBI, which we reasonably then infer implies a transformation of those institutions (and most other sociopolitical institutions as well) from anti-Communist to crypto-Communist saboteurs. I.e., at some point, the CIA & FBI (and most other sociopolitical institutions as well) were captured by Communists. The question is when this occurred. One complication to this question is that the "when" is likely not a specific moment in time, but an ongoing process which still is not complete now, but is on a trajectory toward success.
Ah, Hesperado,
One of us is making a fool of himself in public. Since I was a professor of pediatrics at a major medical school (far from the Beltway) before I retired in 2011, I can’t help but make this a teachable moment. Allow me to direct you to two sources of foreign policy opinion that tend be libertarian and not “radical left critique:”
1. Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. https://quincyinst.org/
2. Antiwar.com. https://www.antiwar.com/
I hope this helps in your search for the truth.