Charlie Rose

SmilingIndonesia  04/30/2011 12:23 PM Report

Dear Charlie, I wish you could bring up a new perspective on Indonesia. But you didn't have it. I remembered enjoy your interview on new Egypt a month ago. You invited various guests to the room just behind of the Nile river. Why can't you do it on Indonesia? Please tell me how did you see SBY? He doesn't seem convincing enough. Or, has he lost his charming? Or, you are lost in translation when interviewed him? Your smile told me YES??

SharkswithfrikingLazers  04/28/2011 04:38 PM Report

I dare you to watch this interview back-to-back with the Lee Kuan Yew interview. http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11573. What a huge difference.

Yew: "The 21st century will be a contest for supremacy in the Pacific because that’s where the growth will be."

Yew: "And so he (Deng Xiaoping) said "How did you get there?" I said "Well, we educated our people, and look at all these companies. Americans, Japanese, Europeans, they bring technology, they train our people, we learn how to do things."

So there you go Indonesia. You're welcome.

heureuyda  04/28/2011 08:26 AM Report

We donn't need any of yours. Are you sure there no one like Bambang in your country, what a shame (with your assumption)? We have plenty person like Bambang, and more better than him.

tabs  04/27/2011 07:41 PM Report

We will trade you one Barrack Obama for one Bambang Yudhoyono.

heureuyda  04/27/2011 10:09 AM Report

'Pluralism' have a different definition in my country. You never understand since you didn't understand our religion. How can you understand us, if in every time you called us (moslem) a terrorist? Please, just learn (culture) from us before you make some conclusion about us, or our leader.

gr8ice  04/26/2011 04:27 PM Report

He is surely smart. "War" between religions would always there no matter what no matter where you live. But the most important thing is that those differences and "war" does not handicap the economic or social live of this country. Which means democracy stay stand out of those differences. Thanks Mr. Rose !

Patrick2009  04/26/2011 03:32 PM Report

Charlie,

Before claiming Indonesia as example of tolerant democracy, please check the fact of recent increase of intolerance to Indonesian minorities. Ask about Ahmadiyah persecution or impossibility of religious minority to built their place of worship in case like Presbyterian church in Bogor or Lutheran church in Jakarta suburb or more recent Syiah in Madura. Pay someone to translate new from various online media event facebook and do fact checking. I was disappointed that you didn't ask hard question to Yudhoyono.

Yudhoyono may have his own idea of Indonesia, but realities in the street is different, Indonesia has become intolerant place to live and you should cross it as an example of democracy and tolerant Muslim country (repeatable example in all media outlet without fact checking.) Maybe your show can be the first to start.

REMant  04/26/2011 12:02 PM Report

Whatever the present American admin wants to make of it, it would seem to me that either Indonesia is geographically and culturally diverse, or an example of Muslim democracy, but not both. Nor am I certain that it was "underdeveloped" until 13 yrs ago. The current president would seem an example of the kind of connection this country developed with the military in much of the rest of the world since WWII. Taking office in 2004, tho, General Yudhoyono is Indonesia's first elected head of state since declaring independence after WWII.

Shortly after the end of that war, James Michener, both anti-colonialist and anti-Communist, wrote after visiting the country that it was so chaotic citizens and investors alike wished it were still under the Dutch, whose colony is was for 350 yrs. Like most of the rest of Asia it was illiterate and oligarchic because of that, he said, but: "I am convinced that men like Sjahir, Sukarno, Nehru and Nu of Burma would, like George Washington, gladly surrender power right now if they could look forward to the kind of self-governing nation Washington could contemplate in 1797." "At the same time," Michener went on, "we must remember that inevitably the course course of history in Asia will be away from the oligarchs and toward the people...Our policy in Asia therefore faces a most difficult task. We must support the oligarchs - and really support them with our faith, money, and if necessry planes - just as long as they provide responsible government. But we must always remember that America will never possess enough money or planes to keep one Asiatic oligarchic in power after the people of his country no longer want him."

That isn't exactly what happened, however. Sukarno was unfriendly to the West, and Suharto and the army, which in 1968 overthrew him with American support, was staunchly anti-Communist, again attracting foreign money, leading tho to the Asian financial crisis of the mid-'90s, and his removal. Subsequent growth has again paralleled American credit expansion. Since 2008 Indonesia has followed a course similar to China's, but the economy is fairly well balanced. As in this country, however, critics claim the govt, which was forced to agree to IMF strictures in 1998, is overly cautious. Yet the picture that emerges, as with many would-be allies, is of the difficulty of dealing with American whims.