this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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Jimmy Carter
He oversaw East Timor
You know it doesn't take much to use the internet to be educated, right? It practically does the work for you now...
Jimmy Carter's administration faced significant criticism for its handling of the East Timor situation during Indonesia's occupation. Despite Carter's reputation as a champion of human rights, his presidency saw a continuation and even expansion of military support to Indonesia while it committed atrocities in East Timor[1][2].
In 1977-1978, as Indonesia engaged in wholesale destruction of East Timor through massive bombardment and forced relocation of populations, the Carter Administration increased the flow of military equipment to Indonesia[1]. This included supplying OV-10 Broncos, planes designed for counterinsurgency operations, which were used in ferocious attacks that devastated East Timor[1][2].
The administration's response to the crisis was particularly troubling:
U.S. officials, including Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, misled Congress about the situation in East Timor, downplaying the severity of the conflict[2].
When the CIA reported that Indonesia was running out of weapons due to the intensity of its bombardment, the Carter administration responded by increasing military sales to Indonesia in 1978[2].
The administration provided ground attack fighters like OV-10 Broncos, A-4s, and F-5s, knowing they would be used against East Timor's civilian population[2].
Carter later expressed regret for his lack of intervention, admitting in a 2007 interview that he was not as thoroughly briefed about the situation in East Timor as he should have been[2]. However, this does not negate the fact that his administration's policies contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of East Timorese during his years in office[1][3].
Citations: [1] https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/12/30/jimmy-carter-the-false-savoir/ [2] https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/10/jimmy_carter_indonesia_east_timor_genocide [3] https://inthesetimes.com/article/jimmy-carter-foreign-policy-palestine-legacy [4] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2025/1/10/historians-say-jimmy-carters-human-rights-legacy-includes-grim-failures [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_of_the_Jimmy_Carter_administration [6] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/indonesia/2019-08-28/us-sought-preserve-close-ties-indonesian-military-it-terrorized-east-timor-runup-1999-independence [7] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1999/08/12/carter-assails-indonesia-over-east-timor-security/b128a1a8-b856-404c-a84a-2202332e6fb5/ [8] https://sporastudios.org/mark/epluribusunum/carter.htm
https://etan.org/timor/uspolicy.htm
You don't have to treat it as a source, that's why they link to sources. Being posted by NBC or NYT makes no difference to the validity of the sources. Learn to fucking read.
Kissinger worked for Carter. Did he get executed? Did he get jailed? Oh, he got even more influence? Then Carter is guilty for approving.
JIMMY CARTER: "Well, as you may know, I had a policy when I was president of not selling weapons if it would exacerbate a potential conflict in a region of the world, and some of our allies were very irate about this policy. And I have to say that I was not, you know, as thoroughly briefed about what was going on in East Timor as I should have been. I was more concerned about other parts of the world then."
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/10/jimmy_carter_indonesia_east_timor_genocide
That sounds like a completely believable explanation to me. I can completely believe that that the military advisors didn't give him the full picture of what was happening there.
From the article you linked.
What's more, let's pretend to be the most gullible person in the world, totally unaware of how the US has historically operated, and take Carter at his word. Was anyone prosecuted for lying to the president? Was anyone court martialed, did anyone in the CIA, State Department, or Department of Defense face any sort of legal repercussions? No?
Then I guess the US must have been pretty satisfied with the outcome, to not make any provisions to ensure it wouldn't happen again or even punish those who led to it. And of course they were, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman must have made a literal killing.
Ah, so you're not actually interested in learning, but in sealioning.
That's cool, I've been around democrats before.
Of course, the classic "don't ask, don't tell" of the national security state. The careerists don't want oversight and the president wants plausible deniability so they're left to just do whatever tf they want with no democratic accountability whatsoever.
And that in itself is a reason why the intelligence community cannot be allowed to exist in its current form.
That it's trivially easy for them to just casually decide to do a genocide with no input or oversight from any democratic process that could hold them accountable or allow the people to actually control what our foreign policy is.