[Marinir] [TNI] The TNI is capable of bad as well as good.

[YapHongGie]

From:  "Holy Uncle" <holyuncle at hotmail.com>
Date:  Sun Nov 14, 2004  9:03 pm ; Msg # 29789
Subject:  The TNI is capable of bad as well as good.

http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200411/kt2004111418550654240.htm


[Tom Plate] American Do-gooders Are at It Again!
By Tom Plate
Professor at University of California, Los Angeles
Director of Asia Pacific Media Network

LOS ANGELES _ I probably contribute more money every year to America¡¯s slew
of non-governmental organizations and human-rights groups than most people
on my block. Many NGOs do heroic work and raise vital international issues
that might otherwise get lost in the shuffle. I greatly admire them _ most
of the time. They are trying to actually advance moral values while a lot
others are just spewing out hot air about them

But sometimes they get on my nerves.

Here¡¯s one new NGO road I won¡¯t travel down: Just the other day 16 NGOs
fired off a letter petitioning the U.S. Congress to end all U.S. assistance
to the Indonesian military.

The letter, released to reflect the anniversary of the ungodly 1991 Santa
Cruz massacre in which Indonesian mowed down hundreds of peaceful protesters
in then-not-independent East Timor, in effect takes a condemnatory,
absolutist position on Indonesia¡¯s military.

The view under conveyance is that TNI_ the acronym for the Indonesian army _
is a hopeless massacre machine, incapable of doing any good, a terminal
repository of evil. Accordingly, for Congress to authorize aid of any kind
whatsoever to the wholly despicable TNI would be to confer Uncle Sam¡¯s
blessings on this military evil-empire.

May I displease these NGOs to differ?

The TNI (like any military, including America¡¯s _ and do I need to offer
examples?) is capable of bad as well as good. It is, I admit, a less than
perfect or saintly instrument.

But it does bring to the Indonesia table one singular asset: It is one of
the very few institutions in that sprawling archipelago nation of thousands
of islands and approximately 209 million Muslims (the largest Muslim country
in the world, actually) that keeps the country glued together. Were it to
become unglued (through neglect and lack of civilian oversight),
Indonesia¡¯s miseries could well mushroom into national meltdown.

Look at it this way: Remember how, more than a year ago, after the
then-successful U.S. invasion of Iraq, victorious America dismantled the
country¡¯s army forces, not to mention the Ba¡¯ath Party, which was only
Iraq¡¯s largest existing political network.

Big mistake. The ugly, obvious result today, for all the world can see, is
chaos in Iraq. And chaos is what we may well get in Indonesia if the country
doesn¡¯t continue to modernize its military, rewarding it for good behavior
and disciplining it when it goes wrong.

If our well-meaning but ill-reasoning NGOs want to bring a measure of
accountability to what has historically been the modern country¡¯s single
most important institution, more U.S. aid is needed, not less. Instead of
banning aid under IMET, the International Military Education and Training
program. Congress should thoughtfully expand it.

Indonesia has just experienced an absolutely splendid national election in
which the vast majority of the citizens went to largely violence-free polls
and for the first time in the country¡¯s relatively short history directly
elected their president (who is a former TNI officer, by the way).

This near-miraculous event (ignored by much of the U.S. mass media, of
course) demonstrated not only that democracy and Allah are anything but
mortal enemies but also that a Muslim country can remain secure and
democratic even with some crazy extremists roaming in their midst.

And _ do not doubt this! _ those Muslim extremists would like nothing better
than to torch this young democracy, destabilize this strategically vital
Southeast Asian nation, and push back Indonesia into the stone ages of a
Muslim religious state.

That¡¯s why a strong and professional military is essential to Indonesia.
Yes, war-crime tribunals to bring the army¡¯s bad elements to justice cannot
be abandoned; but neither can the entire military apparatus. Instead of
cutting aid off, Congress should fund new aid-to-TNI programs to be run by
the superb U.S. Pacific Command (it was not them but the Central Command
that ran Iraq and Abu Ghraib) at Camp Smith near Hawaii¡¯s Pearl Harbor.
They have experts there on everything from military justice to military
modernization. Rather than radicalizing or re-thugging TNI, the U.S. Pacific
Command would accelerate its modernization, keep the bad elements at bay and
advance the goals of a stable, democratic, Muslim Indonesia.

The NGO prescription, however well-intentioned, leaves me shaking with
disbelief and _ yes _ fury. ¡°I never knew a man who had better motives for
all the trouble he caused,¡± the late, great British novelist Graham Greene
wrote of his fictional well-meaning American ¡°Pyle¡± in his enduring ¡°The
Quiet American,¡± a deeply insightful novel about the bumbling American
character gone haywire in the nightmare of Vietnam. ¡°He was determined ¡¦
to do good, not to any individual person but to a country, a continent, a
world. Well, he was in his element now with the whole world to improve.¡±

Greene was bang-on: Well-meaning Americans are prone to sacrifice the good
on the altar of the ideal _ especially in someone else¡¯s country! We have
got to get a grip on ourselves before people around the world start to get
the idea that we are living in a demented mental world wholly divorced from
their on-the-ground reality.



11-14-2004 18:56