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# Posted 12:32 PM by Ariel David Adesnik

I TOLD YOU SO: With the US intelligence establishment still reeling from revelations of incompetence before and after September 11th, it's good to know that it was at least able to predict the attack on Bali. The fact that listening to the United States could have saved hundreds of lives and billions of dollars should suggest to other Middle Eastern and Asian nations that supporting the war on terrorism might not be such a bad idea.

On the other hand, one cannot hold Pres. Sukarnoputri solely responsible for Indonesia's unpreparedness. With the brutal and corrupt military and security forces discredited after decades of dictatorships, there was little incentive to give such forces the sort of authority needed to reign in terror. As one expert on Indonesian politics observed in the NY Times, Sukarnoputri's rush to pass anti-terror legislation after the Bali attack has scared many Indonesians who know that internal security laws have become nothing more than a pretext for political repression in neighboring states such as Malaysia.

The bottom line: If the Bush administration wants Indonesia to become a firm ally in the war on terror, it has support civilian authority and democratic reforms within Indonesia. The war for democracy and the war on terror are inseparable. Just as tens of millions of Arabs believe the US and Israel destroyed the Twin Towers in order to justify a war on Islam, tens of millions of Indonesians believe the Bali attack was the work of the CIA. Why? Because where there is no freedom of expression, prejudice rules. In the democracies of the world, there was universal sympathy for the United States after September 11th and near-universal support for the war in Afghanistan. The truth works against Bin Laden.

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