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If East Timor was Kosovo, we all know what would have happened by now.
U.S. President Bill Clinton would have gone on national television to denounce Indonesian president B.J Habibie as a new Hitler and a threat to world peace.
There would have been American-led cries (with a hearty, "Me too!" from Jean Chretien and Lloyd Axworthy) to indict Indonesia's army generals for war crimes.
The media would be referring to what is now happening in East Timor as a "new Holocaust."
The reason none of this is happening is obvious.
The United States, the key player in both conflicts, regards Serbia as a pariah state and Indonesia as a valued trading partner.
Say this much for the Americans. At least they address their blatant double standards and selective morality in the open.
In Canada, our politicians simply ignore the huge discrepancies in approach, hoping no one will notice.
Belgrade remember, was bombed for waging a campaign of murder, terror and ethnic cleansing against an independence movement in Kosovo in which 10,000 ethnic Albanians were killed over a few months.
Indonesia, by contrast, is being consulted on UN peacekeepers, including 600 Canadians, after the latest outrage in its 24-year campaign of murder, terror and ethnic cleansing against East Timor's independence, in which some 275,000 people have died. (One-third of East Timor's entire population prior to its 1975 invasion by Indonesia.)
And yet no one calls for bombing Indonesia or Dili in East Timor the way Belgrade and Kosovo were bombed.
This, even though pro-Indonesian forces are making good on their threat to "slaughter" all backers of independence in the recent UN-sponsored referendum in East Timor, in which 78.5% voted in favour.
Just "because we bombed in Kosovo doesn't mean we should bomb Dili," is the way Samuel Berger, Clinton's national security adviser, explained it to the New York Times on Sept. 9.
Purely economic reasons
Berger's reasons were revealing in that they were almost entirely economic, while skirting the immorality of what Indonesia was doing in East Timor, compared to what Serb forces did in Kosovo.
"Indonesia is the fourth-largest country in the world," Berger stressed. "It is undergoing a fragile but tremendously important political and economic transformation, which the United States strongly supports. The resolution of this crisis matters not just for East Timor, but for Indonesia as a whole."
Asked about the possibility of economic sanctions against Indonesia, Berger responded: "It's not a question of making threats. It's a question of stating what is simply a practical fact of life, which is that it would be very hard for the international community to be of economic assistance if there is a chaotic situation in Timor."
Indeed, over the years the U.S. (and numerous other countries) contributed billions of dollars to Indonesia through the International Monetary Fund (to say nothing of arms sales) in order to prop up its economy and protect U.S. business interests.
Despite widespread reports from observers on the ground that the Indonesian army was in fact assisting anti-separatist paramilitaries in terrorizing the civilian population of East Timor, senior American officials and military commanders stressed they did not believe Indonesia's commander-in-chief - Gen. Wiranto - was directing the violence. At worst, they argued, he had made insufficient efforts to control junior officers who might have been encouraging violence in order to block independence.
While observers also claimed Indonesian president Habibie was no longer in charge of his own military, the Americans, who have praised Habibie as a democratic reformer, warned if he was overthrown, his successor could be far worse, which is why he needed to be helped rather than bombed like Slobodan Milosevic.
The contrast with Kosovo is obvious and startling.
There, the U.S., with Canada and NATO in tow, pursued its interests by exaggerating Serb atrocities and condemning the Serbian military and political leadership as war criminals.
In East Timor, the U.S., with Canada and the UN in tow, pursued its interests by minimizing Indonesian atrocities and portraying the Indonesian military and political leadership as positively as possible.
In both cases, of course, the dead are still the dead.