Ep 45: Suharto and the Forgotten Genocide

Serving as the world's most-populous Islamic nation, Indonesia's modern history has been dominated by Suharto, a general who took power in a violent counter-coup, annihilated the opposition while suspending due process, thereby detaining, torturing and killing innocents, and established a corporatist autocracy nominally under the thin veil of democracy whereby the army controlled all major political and economic affairs. So why did the US endorse and support his rise to power? Was Vietnam the US' sole occupation in Southeast Asia, or, in some ways, was Indonesia the real prize?