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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

Suharto was brutal, but he made Indonesia a better place. He was no saint, but Indonesia was largely stable. He made it an Asian Tiger, like what Park Chung-hee did to South Korea.

The biggest irony of all is the biggest anti-Communist killers are communists themselves. Stalin purged many Trotskyists in the Soviet Union. In Indonesia, the so-called mass killings of millions of communists (PKI-Indonesia's Commuist Party) in 1965 was carried out by communists themselves to cover up their own communism, especially in Bali.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Indonesia

Hardly a good man, and I hope the tyrant Suharto rots in wherever dark place he is now. I had Christian relatives in Indonesia who were persecuted for simply dissenting with his government, and so I’d hardly call him a hero. I still have friends here (now US citizens) who are afraid to speak his name. The man was an Islamic despot who, along with his family, made people disappear if they so much as raised a finger in protest to his rule. Defeated Communism? To some extent, but (like many countries) he replaced it with a tyranny of his own. He kept a vast majority of the Indonesian population poor beyond belief, while he and his friends hoarded the riches accumulated through cronyism, nepotism, and exploitation. All made possible under his iron dictatorship. Hardly the mark of a benevolent ruler. Thank God for the USA, which maintains checks and balances to ensure such treacherous rule doesn’t hit our shores. We tend to take such freedoms for granted.

I was in Java in 1976, the early 80s and 96-to-early-98 — during which time people were TERRIFIED to even mention his name. Completely oppressive, militant rule. Go to Jakarta now and talk to some of the people there; most are still obscenely poor but now enjoy the gift of free speech. Speak with any missionary or expatriate who’s been there for a while and you’ll get the same observation. The horrific treatment of Indonesia’s native peoples in remote areas like Aceh or East Timor were not tall tales. As a conservative myself, I’d hardly call any of it liberal media spin.

I guess we can agree to disagree here on the supposed “stellar” character of Suharto. Sure, he was friendly with the US (in exchange for huge benefits of course), but he was quite the monster to his own people. From outside looking in, it’s an easy thing to miss. Just look at what’s going on in China...