Action to Aid East Timor

* Why do we feel the need to ask permission from Indonesia before sending a peacekeeping force to East Timor? Did we ask Iraq’s permission before sending troops into Kuwait? Did we ask before we sent troops into France during WWII?

East Timor is not part of Indonesia. The United Nations condemned Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of East Timor. Please remember that 80% of the arms used in the invasion were supplied by the U.S. Even after the invasion, the U.S. increased arms sales to Indonesia. Independence for East Timor has been recognized by the Security Council and endorsed by the World Court for 25 years. At the very least, President Clinton should immediately send humanitarian aid to repair the damage the White House has already caused. Why wait? Children are dying right now, and the U.S. government has Timorese blood on its hands.

CHRIS STOCKDILL

Ventura

* Your story about Indonesian Gen. Wiranto singing “Feelings” (Sept. 13) after the bloodthirsty militia he controls brutalized the people of East Timor reminded me of Filipino dictators Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, who used to croon the same 1975 hit song while they robbed the country blind.

DANNY PETILLA

Woodland Hills

* Indonesian President B.J. Habibie’s quick policy change and acceptance of an international force is astonishing good news (Sept. 13). Is it possible the Clinton administration has finally learned the game of foreign policy?

SELBY JESSUP

Hollywood

* In “Manipulators of Mayhem” (Sept. 12), Donald K. Emmerson writes, “Anarchy reigns in East Timor.” The same characterization has previously been made of such countries as Lebanon, Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland and Somalia, among others. “Anarchy” has been defined as “the absence of government,” and yet it seems clear that in each of these instances--including East Timor--it has been an abundance of government, not its absence, that is responsible for the violence and butchery. Different political factions--many of them supported by arms and money from other nation-states--vie for the control of the political machinery that will impose coercive rule over millions of men and women. The explanation for such deadly disorder is to be found not in anarchy but in the nature of politics itself.

BUTLER SHAFFER

Los Angeles

* What a hypocritical contrast between the Clinton administration’s television blitz demonizing Slobodan Milosevic and bombing Serb civilian targets and its timid and shameful nonreaction to East Timor ethnic cleansing. Where, as thousands of East Timor citizens are brutalized, are all the bemedaled generals who were so prominent a few months ago on TV denouncing the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo?

WILLIAM N. McNAIRN

Palos Verdes Estates