Indonesia - Former President Suharto is dead

AFP via translation | January 27, 2007

[HAL9000]

via translation -

ALERT - Death of former Indonesian dictator Suharto

JAKARTA - Former President Suharto, who has held an iron fist in Indonesia for 32 years, died Sunday in Jakarta at the age of 86, announced a senior official of the police.

[jdm]

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

[Lib-Lickers 2]

so much for his miraculous recovery

[Tailback]

Only the good die young...

[kb2614]

I hadn’t realized he was still alive. He was not a pleasant character.

[mylife]

He was misery to his people

[JasonC]

And also the only reason Indonesia wasn't a totalitarian communist state throughout the cold war.

[Anti-Hillary]

Population in hell: ??? + 1.

[Wacka]

Our Top Story Tonight:

Francisco Franco is Still Dead!

[spyone]

It was a totalitarian theftocracy.

[Jemian]

wow! The news hasn’t made it to the provinces yet.

[ReignOfError]

And also the only reason Indonesia wasn't a totalitarian communist state throughout the cold war.

To paraphrase someone whose name I've forgotten, he was a son of a bitch, but he was our son of a bitch.

[Jemian]

Frankly, he was a democratic despot. But he probably was better than anyone else available.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Lots of folks said that about many other folks, but the earliesr might have been FDR’s Republican Secretary of State Cordell Hull regarding former dictator of the Dominican Republic Rafael Trujillo.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Cordell Hull was a Democrat. He was previously a Congressman and Senator from my state of TN and represented the House district that Gore, Sr. and Jr. would later occupy.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

You are right, it was FDR’s Secretary of War Henry Stimson (also Teddy Roosevelt’s Secretary of War) and Frank Knox who was Secretary of the Navy, and had been GOP VP candidate in 1936, who were the Republicans in the FDR cabinet.

[dfwgator]

"OUR TOP STORY TONIGHT...PRESIDENT SUHARTO IS STILL DEAD!"

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

When we see the alternative, we may pine for the good old days.

[fieldmarshaldj]

And, unfortunately, the Republican in JFK’s Cabinet was none other than Robert Strange McNamara.

[PotatoHeadMick]

Amazing how a man who was a good friend to the west and who achieved the biggest defeat over international Communism up until the fall of the Berlin Wall should be so vilified here in Free Republic.

Methinks you’re all buying into the liberal media spin a little too much.

Indonesia was the biggest jewel in the crown of Asian Communism, China was on the point of gobbling it up, yet without so much as one single US soldier having to put a boot on the ground Suharto wiped out the Communists. The third biggest Communist party in the world at that time was handed its ass on a plate by him. Frankly if the US “allies” in SE Asia at that time had been as equally resolute 55,000 young Americans would not have needlessly died in Vietnam.

It’s easy to spit on a man’s grave after he has done you such a favour but it speaks badly of American loyalty to friends in time of need for posters here to do so now.

We know he ended up being corrupt, but he brought stability and a large measure of peace and prosperity to his sprawling, disparate nation, he remained a staunch friend of the US. Probably a hell of a lot of US allies in the world today are corrupt, but that should not take away from the help he gave in a very dangerous area at a very dangerous time for the US.

RIP General Suharto