And the world becomes that much better of a place.

[Ibby]

Suharto's dead.
One less ruthless dictator left in the world.

[classicman]

And no one had him in the pool either....

srsly, I completely agree with you Ib.

[ZenGum]

Nonsense! he will be sadly missed .... by that 0.1% of Indonesians who got rich under his rule.

But lets not get too high and mighty. My country, and yours, cozied up with him simply because he was anti-communist.

FWIW I think SBY is one of the best able, capable, qualified and as far as I know honest leaders in the world today.

[Elspode]

Power vacuum.

And, as Iraq has proven, those kinds of vacuums *really* suck.

[piercehawkeye45]

Dictators are like my rival's football team, no matter who they lost someone was always ready to stand up and take their spot. I don't know anything about Suharto but I doubt that it will be much better.

[Aliantha]

My sympathy to his family. I'm sure there are millions of people who are pleased to see the end of this dictator though. Fortunately his reign ended some time ago.

He was a terrible man who caused the deaths of thousands.

[ZenGum]

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

Dictators are like my rival's football team, no matter who they lost someone was always ready to stand up and take their spot. I don't know anything about Suharto but I doubt that it will be much better.

Suharto was overthrown by mass demonstrations, replaced first by an eccentric guy called Habibe, then democratically elected leaders followed. IIRC the first was an elderly Imam, the second was Megawati Sukarnoputri (daughter of a previous president) and the current one is Susilo Bambang Yudhyono (SBY) who is a great guy - capable, qualified, educated, and appears to be honest too. I wonder where they found him.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Ibram

Suharto's dead.
One less ruthless dictator left in the world.

Quite right, Ibbie. I knew there was hope for you.

Now really, would anyone object to speeding the process up around the world? Our troubles come from undemocratic societies.

[xoxoxoBruce]

UG wants to be a ruthless dictator, to the whole world.

[lookout123]

no no, he's benevolent.

[Griff]

Just don't vote for bad stuff, cuz that's anti-democratic...

[Ibby]

Ew, UG agrees with me?
then I take it back

today (well, a couple weeks ago), the world has lost a great and powerful leader of men. he will be missed.

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Quite right, Ibbie. I knew there was hope for you.

Now really, would anyone object to speeding the process up around the world? Our troubles come from undemocratic societies.

Don't be so naive UG, we gave Suharto the green light to attack East Timor and we supported him almost the entire length of his regime.

The Archive has worked for many years to open U.S. government files on Indonesia and East Timor. In December 2001, the Archive posted newly declassified documents showing that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and President Gerald Ford gave the green light to Indonesia's 1975 invasion of East Timor, the beginning of a 24-year occupation in which more than 100,000 Timorese died (Readers are invited to refer to this earlier briefing book for historical background on East Timor and Indonesia's 1975 invasion).

They also demonstrate that Washington realized Indonesia's intention of taking East Timor by force far earlier than previously recognized, was aware of - and discounted or suppressed - credible reports of ongoing Indonesian atrocities from 1975 to 1983, turned a blind eye to the extensive use of U.S. weapons in East Timor, and through 1999 viewed the crisis in East Timor primarily as a distraction from its priority of maintaining close relations with the Indonesian government and armed forces.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB174/index.htm

Up until the very end, Washington's role in this unfolding drama has been deplorable. The United States supported Suharto from day one and then for 12,000 days after that. Only in the last ten hours of his rule did Washington begin to distance itself from the dictator.

Let's remember: After pushing aside Indonesia's founding president Sukarno in 1965, Suharto and his military killed as many as one million people. The U.S. government gave Suharto a helping hand, even providing the generals with the names of 5,000 suspected communists. The United States also made sure that Suharto's men had enough weapons to do the job. "A steady flow of cable traffic between the U.S. embassy in Jakarta and Washington released under the Freedom of Information Act shows conclusively that the United States was well aware of the killings, approved of them, and even sent emergency supplies of small firearms to arm the killers," writes Carmel Budiardjo in Surviving Indonesia's Gulag: A Western Woman Tells Her Story (Cassell).

In the ensuing years, the United States continued to arm Suharto and give economic aid. In December 1975, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and President Gerald Ford visited Jakarta and gave Suharto the green light to invade East Timor, which he did within forty-eight hours. That invasion and occupation cost 200,000 lives.

Suharto was Washington's creature. And it took Washington the longest time to abandon him. Even on the last day of his rule, there was a split within the Administration over whether to call for him to step down or muffle criticism.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...62/ai_20818235

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

UG wants to be a ruthless dictator, to the whole world.

But I can't be ruthless! -- it happens one of my wife's middle names is Ruth. Surely I shall have to take some other approach.

In any case, it is hardly totalitarian to run about destroying totalitarian régimes. More the antitotalitarian, in ways dear Bruce, whatever his virtues, simply... isn't.

What boots it a man, Bruce, when he isn't against totalitarian social orders?

Am I remotely for any such? See me complaining any about five thousand dead communists -- who are by no conceivable stretch democrats?

Bueller?

Bueller?

Anyone?