I just think there’s something sinister going on. You see, if people in the West/North/OECD demonize Soeharto, it makes them feel better, albeit subconsciously, about their own inhumanity. Soeharto was full of contradictions, all hidden behind that Javanese smile. The world’s not a nice place. No one was more aware of it than Indonesians in 1965.

* WARNING *

[Typical Achmad rant to follow]

I just wish the rest of the commentary could get beyond good and evil.

I don’t know why Soeharto’s such a lightning rod for kneejerk reactions and Western double standards. Some of the stuff he did was very similar to Julius Caesar, Elizabeth 1, and Napoloeon Bonaparte. (None of whom would get high scores from Amnesty International). Why do they get to be “great figures” and Soeharto gets to be “one of the most bloody and corrupt dictators of the 20th century” (NYT, Fox News).

High body count from war and disease in East Timor. Even higher in the Vietnam War. High body count in American Civil War, 100 Years War, Australian Aboriginal community in last 200 years.

But all this was complicated, the Western commentators say. What and ’65-’66 wasn’t ? Why does Western nation-building deserve nuance and sophistication, but countries like Indonesia and any number of African and South American States don’t ?

Out on a limb here. The West outsources it’s war (anti-communism) to the likes of Soeharto and now many are unwillingly helping it launder its conscience. Massacres, genocide, human rights abuses, happen in nasty f–kd up places like Indonesia, goes the subconscious thinking, not in Manhattan. When it does, it dominates the news. For years.

Congratulations on the wedding.

Actually, to be honest, I think you’re missing the voice of the people in this column. What’s been amazing is the outpouring of respect for the “Smiling General,” whose grin seemed most charming before he was about to destroy someone’s position, career, or life.

There seems to be a big disconnect between the commentators and the public – high and low. SBY’s declared a national week of mourning. Ordinary Indonesians say life was better under Soeharto.

It seems mainly to be foreign journalists and academics who are using words like “brutal tyrant” regardless of how true they are not.

Why the disconnect?

That’s what I want to know.

In Chile, it took many years after the country had returned to democracy and only after the ex dictator Pinochet had died, before the “wronged crowd” over there could start to come clean with the bloody past. Maybe the “wronged crowd” in Indonesia, in cooperation with the enlightened vanguard, can look to the South American country for an effective example.