I want to believe Richard Holbrooke meant what he said but remember East Timor

[Mike 03]

In the late Seventies he is rumored to have enabled (if not formally authorized) the hideous genocide in East Timor.

Has he ever attempted to make amends for that debacle? If so, maybe we can take his "last words" as literal. I can promise you, joking will not be on my mind when I am in fear of dying. I would like to believe he was being honest about terminating this war that, like Viet Nam, cannot be won according to the very people analyzing it.

Edit from Wiki:

East Timor controversy
In August 1977, then Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke traveled to Indonesia to meet with Suharto in the midst of one of the Indonesian military’s brutal counterinsurgency campaigns in East Timor in which tens of thousands of East Timorese were being killed. According to Brad Simpson, Holbrooke visited officially to press for human rights reform. Once Suharto was met by Holbrooke, Suharto was praised for Indonesia’s human rights improvements and was told that Holbrooke in fact welcomed the steps that Indonesia had taken to open East Timor to the West, allowing a delegation of congressmen to enter the territory under strict military guard, where they were greeted by staged celebrations, welcoming the Indonesian armed forces. Simpson alleges that "Behind the scenes, Holbrooke and Zbigniew Brzezinski played point in trying to frustrate the efforts of congressional human rights activists to condition or stop US military assistance to Indonesia and in fact accelerated the flow of weapons to Indonesia."<33><34>

[NightWatcher]

1. But you must admit that appearing to spin a dead man's words to fit your war is ...

not a good thing to do

[gateley]

2. I just read the reported exchange on HuffPo, and I just don't think anybody can

say what his intent was other than Holbrooke himself. :shrug:

Doesn't really matter, regardless of what his feelings were I'm sure he'd made them known prior to his death, and it would be up to Obama to determine whether or not to act on his advice. Did he ever issue statements on this? Even then, you have to put forth the party line, so...

[frazzled]

3. When I first read the words ...

I thought: something is missing about the context here. He's talking to his Pakistani doctor, who is about to perform surgery. If it was serious, which I assumed, I thought he must have meant to signal that Pakistan needed to step up (in the ways we have been hearing they have not) in the effort and thus help to end the war. If it was a joke, it was perhaps directed at the all-powerful role his doctor was assuming with his life, joking that he hoped the doctor had the ability to do anything.

Whatever he meant, only those nearest and dearest to him (or perhaps the doctor) knows.