THE REAL RICHARD HOLBROOKE RECORD

Richard Holbrooke who passed away this last week has recived scores of tributes as a great peacemaker and premier diplomat….Most of these are me too people who just want to speak without knowing anything and certainly know nothing of history

For Richard Holbrooke was a graduate of the Kissinger realpolitik school and conducted himself in the same amaoral way….The blood of American cold war crimes (and there is a lot of it) is also on his hands.

This article sums up his history better than I could

http://www.counterpunch.org/nevins12162010.html

Holbrooke was a chief enabler of Indonesian human rights violations against the people of East Timor committed by the Indonesian government.

In March 1977, Holbrooke told Australian diplomat James Dunn that Indonesia’s geographical location and oil wealth were “of considerable strategic importance to the U.S. As we see it,” Holbrooke explained, “the Suharto regime is the best of possible alternatives, and we will do nothing to destabilize it.” In other words, the Carter administration would not support East Timor, but would, instead of “staring down” Indonesia’s dictator, back him—with weapons, financial assistance, and diplomatic cover. Notwithstanding the horrific results of this policy, Holbrooke had the temerity to proclaim in a 1979 prepared statement to Congress that “[t]he welfare of the Timorese people is the major objective of our policy toward East Timor.” (2)

Just as he had lied to Congress in 1979, Holbrooke misled his listeners in Jakarta twenty years later. Indeed, he subsequently openly bragged about burying discussion of East Timor.

Holbrooke’s chief claim to fame was the Dayton Accords which supposedly ended the Bosnian conflict in 1995. The Clinton approach to Bosnia always struck me as closing the barn door after the horses had escaped. Horrible crimes on a massive scale had already been committed and America comes in at the end and pressures the….Bosnian Muslims the people who were mostly the victim of atrocities.

On top of that, Holbrooke was involved in the breaking away of Kosovo from Serbia….Here the US acted quickly and here the US was wrong….Kosovo has turned into a criminal state full of illegal organ transplanters, drug smugglers, and Islamic terrorists.

Couple this with his lifelong support of Israel no matter what they do and his ineptitude in recent years as the Afghanistan envoy and you have a record that shouldn’t make one too proud….