The Enduring Legacy of Gerald R. Ford

Chris
Floyd

Thursday, December 28, 2006 - I believe that the picture below tells us all we need to know about
the lasting impact the presidency of Gerald R. Ford has had on the United
States of America, the nation he so proudly led for a couple of years
after pardoning the man who was at that time the biggest criminal ever
to occupy the Oval Office.

Yes, it was Gerald R. Ford who took those famously amoral and criminally
incompetent backroom operators, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, out
of the lower quadrants of the twisted bowels of the Nixon White House
and raised them to the highest levels of American government, where,
in one form or another, overtly and covertly, they have inflicted their
primitive ideology and violent psychodramas on the nation, and the world,
for more than three decades.

But Ford's enduring legacy is in no way exhausted by the glories of
his bloodthirsty political progeny. For the sad occasion of the statesman's
death is certainly a most appropriate time to recall what is probably
his greatest geopolitical masterstroke: the green-lighting of Indonesia's
1975 invasion of East Timor – an act of state-sponsored terrorism
that killed more than 200,000 people. True, George W. Bush has now far
surpassed that genocidal benchmark, setting new standards of pointless
and barbaric mass murder in Iraq – but only with the help of Fordians
Cheney and Rumsfeld!

I first wrote about the pivotal role that Ford, along with Henry Kissinger
(currently the chief outside adviser to the White House, according to
Cheney – hey, it's like the Nixon-Ford era never ended!), back
in 2001, just after the release of declassified documents which had
been gathered and published by the invaluable National Security Archive
(see their report East Timor Revisited for more). As I noted in a follow-up
report in May 2006:

...The documents were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act
– in June 2001, before George W. Bush gutted the law – but
only reported in December of that year by the Washington Post. Kissinger
and Ford had long denied any prior knowledge of the murderous assault,
even though they'd been feasting with the genocidal Indonesian tyrant
Suharto the day before the troops went in. However, in a secret State
Department cable, Ford and Kissinger actually told Suharto before the
attack that "we understand the problem you have and the intentions
you have" and "we will not press you on the issue."

Kissinger, ever mindful of the media angle, added in another love note:
"We understand your problem and the need to move quickly but I
am only saying that it would be better if it were done after we returned."

The murders were carried out with U.S. weaponry. Congress had restricted
their use to defensive purposes only, but Kissinger blithely brushed
this aside, assuring Suharto that America would "construe"
the invasion as "self-defense rather than a foreign operation."
Kinda like Hitler did with Poland.

Naturally, the December 2001 story was buried by the usual bull-roaring
of Bush praise in the media. In fact, in the same issue of the Post
in which news of the declassification first appeared, you might have
been diverted from its revelations by a fascinating piece on the editorial
page, a long disquisition on the new ordering of the world, penned by
one of our most revered elder statesmen:

Henry Kissinger.

I also noted in the May post that on September 21, 1999, Sander Thoenes,
a former colleague of mine at The Moscow Times, was murdered in East
Timor, almost certainly by Indonesian military forces, while covering
the last throes of Jakarta's fury before East Timor won its independence
– another fact to be recorded with the high and mighty deeds of
Gerald R. Ford.

[For more on how the enduring legacy of Gerald R. Ford in Indonesia
has been erased from history, see this post from Dennis Perrin: Airbrushing
the Dead.]

It's unlikely that we will hear very much about these aspects of Gerald
R. Ford's enduring legacy in the innumerable encomiums that will fill
the corporate media in the coming days. There the focus will undoubtedly
be on the way Ford "healed the nation" by thwarting the course
of justice and keeping the most depraved operators of the Nixon gang
in power. But as a public service, we thought it only fitting to recall
these triumphs of the 38th President of the United States.