Invaluable to have your input and interpretation of what you heard, especially this:

Although we wrapped up our meetings just before the suicide bombings in Bali, the Indonesians were worried about just such an attack.

and this:

They are profoundly grateful for the generosity of the U.S. Government and the American people after last year's tsunami.  But their gratitude doesn't mean they owe us a free pass for everything we choose to do.

Thank you.

And we're wealthy and powerful enough to afford the conceit -- for now.

America has always been this way. Read de Tocquevile, for example.

It exhibits itself in an almost isolationist attitude, and lack of interest in what's going on with furriners (the 'ugly American',) lack of desire for foreign aid except for disaster relief, partially because furriners are what grandpa and grandma were and they always said the old country was no good.

That only changes when there's an attack on American soil.

The original George had the pulse on the general direction his gang was going to take this; here's a couple of excerpts just randomly picked, but heck, read the whole thing, it's still very good:

Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it 7 It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it ? Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue ? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?

In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated....

Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?...

Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it 7 It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it ?....

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government. the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel....

Actually, what's interesting is what Lindsay is reporting: that they still give a damn about what our foreign policy is after all we've done to the American exceptionalist myth in the eyes of the other over the last few years. They still think we're capable of saving the world as well as ruining it. Americans are actually usually less inclined to believe that.

Few seemed to recall that the United States had the right of self-defense under international law or that the Taliban ignored a UN Security Council resolution directing all states to deny safe havens to terrorists.

 Let's not be too hard on the ignorant Indonesians for their lack of recall.  After all, many scholars of international law have evidenced quite as much difficulty in "recalling" that the attack on Afghanistan was legally justified under the UN Charter on self-defence. 

 Applying this rule, when the suicide bombers attacked the twin towers in New York City and even the Pentagon in Washington D.C., those attacks were acts of aggression. Under international law, the United States could take military action in self-defense. But also under international law, American military action should have been limited to the rejection of the aggression. This means that American action was limited by international law to the staging of military strikes against the perceived sources of aggression, which are the al-Qaeda camps. It is illegal for the U.S. to engage in prolonged military occupation of Afghanistan.

 Nor was there unanimous agreement that the UNSC Resolutions provided legal basis for the invasion:

No honest reading of these [resolutions' could possibly conclude that they authorize the use of force. They condemn the attacks of September 11 and take a whole host of measures to suppress terrorism, especially SR 1373 which has two dozen operative paragraphs outlining legislative, administrative and judicial measures for the suppression of terrorism and its financing, and for co-operation between states in security, intelligence, investigations and criminal proceedings. The resolution sets up a committee of all its members to monitor progress on the measures in the resolution and has given all states 90 days to report back to it. But not once does either of these resolutions mention military force or anything like it. They don?t even mention Afghanistan by name. Nor do they use the accepted formula "all necessary means" of Resolution 678 of November 29, 1990 by which the Security Council authorized the Gulf War of 1991.

 Let's be clear that I'm not trying to argue that among legal scholars there is universal concord on the question of the legality of the Afghan War.  What is clear however is that - contra your piece - it is quite possible to be fully acquainted with the facts surrounding the invasion and still come to the conclusion that it was illegal. 

You are never going to be able to draw much valuable insight into the mindset of Indonesians or anyone else for that matter if you embark on a "listening tour" with fixed misconceptions about their take on the world. 

I wonder how many of them left the workshop shaking their heads over your lack of recall on the technicalities that preceded the US invasion of Afghanistan.  Perhaps your lack of recall that the Taliban offered to hand over Bin Laden if evidence implicating him was furnished to them (an offer rejected by the Bush administration who chose to bomb instead) might be one example they'd find difficult to justify?

 

Of course we can expound on American democracy, after all, it was just a few "rogue" grunts responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

I can't help but wonder if the Indonesians would be willing to overlook the dubious nature of our invasion of Afghanistan if we had been more competent in execution and outcome.

This is another reminder, and consequence, of the Bushies' obsession with Iraq.

If the neocons truly believed that a functioning democracy in the region would be an example to others, they would have concentrated their efforts in Afghanistan. Instead, we now have a failed narco-state, the creeping resurgence of the Taliban, our hand-picked surrogate Karzai under constant threat, unpredictable warlords dominating the countryside and our own troops there virtually forgotten by us but not by Muslims who are watching closely.

I'm sure most Americans believe that our invasion of Afghanistan was well within our rights of self-defense and, at the time, we certainly had the support of most of the world despite areas of questionable legality.

The tragedy, to me, is that we might have lifted the Afghanis--who had suffered so much under the Soviets, the warlords and the Taliban--into a better world if we had devoted the energy, thought and resources they deserved. It was always a long shot, given Afghanistan's ethnic divisions and history of strife, but our half-hearted effort doomed us to failure from the start.