About Suharto

‘Memory says, want to do it right? Don’t count on me…’
– Adrienne Rich, Atlas of a Difficult World

I owe writing this to some people who asked me early this year what my thoughts were of Soeharto. This is now September, so it’s a very tardy reply. A favorite professor once said that if you can’t finish a draft within a certain designated time, it means that you have not thought the issue through. I have not been able to think Soeharto through. I am of course, hardly the only person who is unable to do so. Last March, five former U.S. ambassadors to Indonesia (The Five Sages, they are called, among them Wolfowitz) gathered together in Cosmos Club in DC and shared their memories of him. They too, could only give sketches and glimpses, sometimes anecdotal (many somehow related to animals: Soeharto and his cows. Soeharto and his mesmerizing fish). For a while I felt like I had an excuse: if wise men of America could not think him through, then I should be forgiven– Read more