- Indonesian reaction to the recent bomb blast in Bali
that killed 180 people is another example of the consequences of U.S. interventionist
policies. According to an article in the Nov. 7 issue of the New York Times,
a common perception among educated Indonesians is that the CIA, not Islamic
terrorists, set off the bomb in order to secure support for the U.S. government's
upcoming war on Iraq.
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- Why would Indonesians arrive at that conclusion? Because
they haven't forgotten the U.S. government's intervention in their country
some four decades ago. As the Times article points out, the CIA helped
Indonesian army generals to effect a regime change in 1965 that resulted
in the ouster of the country's founding president Sukarno "after he
incurred Washington's displeasure for many years."
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- Even worse, the common perception among Indonesians is
that for the next three decades, the U.S. government then proceeded to
support the authoritarian efforts of Sukarno's successor, Suharto, to suppress
Islamic expression.
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- U.S. officials, meanwhile, simply cannot understand "why
conspiracy theories about the United States are so prevalent in Indonesia."
In their minds, the U.S. government is just an innocent babe in the foreign
woods that never does anything bad to people and that the Indonesians must
simply hate America for its freedom and values.
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- But U.S. officials are wrong. It is the U.S. government's
decades-long interventionist policies that are at the root of deep foreign
resentment of the United States all over the world. And as long as the
American people permit their government's interventionist foreign policy
to go unabated, foreign anger, hatred, mistrust, and terrorism against
America will continue.
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- Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future
of Freedom Foundation in Fairfax, Va.
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- © 2001, 2002 The Future of Freedom Foundation. All
rights reserved.
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- http://www.fff.org/comment/com0211b.asp
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