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Suharto, 1921-2008
One of the more brutal U.S. clients of the Cold War era has just died. Suharto -- it's a one-word name, like "Prince" or "Taco" -- was Indonesia's butcher-in-chief and thief-in-chief from 1965 to 1998. The L.A. Times recounts his greatest crimes:
Suharto expanded Indonesia's territory by force and guile, annexing the territories of Papua and East Timor and brutally suppressing the independence movement in the province of Aceh in a conflict that lasted for 27 years.
Estimates of the number of people killed by Suharto's regime "vary from 300,000 to 2 million, but the exact number nobody knows," said Asmara Nababan, former secretary-general of Indonesia's Human Rights Commission.
His military regime incarcerated hundreds of thousands of political prisoners for years without trial. Many critics simply vanished.
Taktix®|1.28.08 @ 3:39PM|#
Dammit, I wasn't going to drink tonight, but now that a brutal
dictator has died,
CHEERS!
|1.28.08 @ 3:41PM|#
Cher
Bono
Sanjaya
Martika
Eminem
The Edge (does that count?)
Sting
Beck
Madonna
Beyoncé
Tiffany
|1.28.08 @ 3:41PM|#
was he truly worse than sukarno?
i'm sympathetic to the whole one-name thing. that's what i did.
Suharto rots with Ayn Rand|1.28.08 @ 3:46PM|#
Funny, but you free-market anti-communists were his biggest cheerleaders as he committed butchery across the archipelago. Do you lack the courage of your convictions? Or are you afraid of getting convicted?
Jesse Walker|1.28.08 @ 3:48PM|#
Funny, but you free-market anti-communists were his biggest
cheerleaders as he committed butchery across the
archipelago.
I was? News to me. Indeed, I'm pretty sure I was denouncing him on
the radio while he was still in office.
Maybe you have me confused with my evil twin, Henry Kissinger.
Les|1.28.08 @ 3:49PM|#
Hey Shrilly,
Carter was as much of a supporter and enabler of Suharto as any
Republican administration. Go read a book.
|1.28.08 @ 3:53PM|#
Suharto along with Pinochet belongs to the second rung of hellish dictators. Suharto was much worse thant Pinochet. But unlike Mao or Castro, managed to turn his country into something other than a communist hellhole. As bad as Suharto was and he was very bad, Indonesia would be a lot worse off had the Communists taken over. The question of course is could Suharto stopped the communists from taking power without whacking a bunch of people. I would like to think he could have.
|1.28.08 @ 4:21PM|#
"His military regime incarcerated hundreds of thousands of
political prisoners for years without trial. Many critics simply
vanished."
Screw that, how was he on markets? Certainly Chavez is far worse
than this guy, I mean that guy nationalized some stuff!
|1.28.08 @ 4:23PM|#
Because he was anti-communist, conservatives gave him a free
pass. Libertarians didn't.
So much a free pass that Young Americans for Freedom once gave his
U.S. Ambassador a model of the freaking Liberty Bell!
Rhywun|1.28.08 @ 4:23PM|#
You have to distinguish people with really only one name like Suharto from poseurs like, well, everyone on that list.
|1.28.08 @ 4:24PM|#
J sub D,
I call foul. 75% of Americans can identify Hillary's and Oprah's
last name. 90%+ could pick their last names out of a list. Can one
American get Martika's last name right? I didn't until I googled
her. Also, Eminem sampled Martika's Toy Soldiers keeping
it real for the single-named celebrity club!
|1.28.08 @ 4:26PM|#
What was the FreedomHouse ranking for Indonesia under Suharto? They have been doing rankings since 1978 so I'd like to see it...Wonder what Reason had to say about him to...
Rimfax|1.28.08 @ 4:36PM|#
I wonder if the body count should include those that died early because of the shitty economics of his authoritarianism. Like John points out, he coulda done much much worse, but he coulda done so much better and still kept Comintern out of power.
highnumber|1.28.08 @ 4:39PM|#
Wonder what Reason had to say about him to...
Dude!
That's still cheap trolling. Do some legwork, find some articles
penned by libertarians that expressed admiration for Suharto, then
fling accusations. That's still trolling, but at least it would be
quality trolling.
|1.28.08 @ 4:48PM|#
"Screw that, how was he on markets? Certainly Chavez is far
worse than this guy, I mean that guy nationalized some
stuff!"
Your tongue-in-cheek analysis nicely summed up U.S. foriegn
policy.
Episiarch|1.28.08 @ 4:53PM|#
Also, Eminem sampled Martika's Toy Soldiers keeping it real
for the single-named celebrity club!
Uh, Eminem is the Slim Shady. The REAL Slim Shady. And that's two
words.
|1.28.08 @ 5:10PM|#
Suharto expanded Indonesia's territory by force and guile,
annexing the territories of Papua and East Timor and brutally
suppressing the independence movement in the province of Aceh in a
conflict that lasted for 27 years.
As far as Papua goes, he was just following Sukarno's lead.
was he truly worse than sukarno?
Yes, he murdered a lot more people than Sukarno ever thought of
doing. (On the other hand,whether Sukarno was in cahoots with the
PKI in their 9/30/65 attempted coup is an interesting question, as
is how many people the PKI would have murdered if they'd gotten the
chance to do so.)
|1.28.08 @ 5:47PM|#
highnumber
My point was that I can't seem to find Reason archives or Freedom
House numbers from the period concerning Indonesia. And there were
some allegations about Pinochet support recently that Reason felt
the need to address. And Suharto was one of these "fight the
commies" dictators too. So yes, I have not gone to the local state
university to look at microfilm, but since the assumption in most
people's minds is that free-marketers made asses of themselves
supporting anti-commie dictators, then perhaps the burden is not on
me to prove the innocence of others here...
But if you like snark check out my "but what did he do with about
markets" comment meant to represent the hard on many H&Rer's
(who don't own the site, or libertarianism I should think, so piss
on your trolling charge for honking them off) have for markets over
all other freedoms.
highnumber|1.28.08 @ 5:55PM|#
MNG,
You were "Hard Core"?
That was all right. Snark is not the same as troll. Sometime soon
at Urkobold we can have an in depth look at the differences between
the two. In short, snark is a quick jab that points out a foible.
Troll is like running at your sparring partner while windmilling
your arms.
Rhywun|1.28.08 @ 5:59PM|#
There's a spreadsheet on the Freedom House site (I don't see it now but I have a copy) with all the rankings going back to 1972. Results for Indonesia as I noted above ("Partly Free until 1992, then Not Free until 1998.").
|1.28.08 @ 6:15PM|#
Partly free? WTF? Sure, he was imprisoning folks left and right,
killing them without due process, grafting money like crazy and
stomping any electoral opposition, but look at what he did with
those marginal rates!
Highnumber-the "guy" was supposed to give it away ;)
Paul|1.28.08 @ 6:56PM|#
He governed the world's fourth-most-populous nation with a combination of paternalism and ruthlessness from 1965 until he was ousted in spring 1998.
National Greatness?
B|1.29.08 @ 10:24AM|#
"One of the more brutal U.S. clients of the Cold War era has
just died."
I guess it would have been better if the Soviet's triumphed,
because as we know they were much kinder and gentler.
Rhywun|1.29.08 @ 10:41AM|#
Partly free? WTF?
The scores were never better than "5 - 5" which is one step above
"Not Free". Compared with cellar dwellers like Saudi Arabia and
China which have always been "Not Free", I suppose Indonesia was "a
little bit better".
Brian Sorgatz|1.29.08 @ 5:16PM|#
Guess where Taco was born: Jakarta, Indonesia.
Six degrees of separation, huh?
Or did Jesse Walker mention Taco to leave an Easter egg for us
trivia geeks?
If Kevin Bacon could somehow be implicated in all this, it would be
the perfect storm of trivia geekery.
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