Surveillance by satellite, seismographic monitoring, ground-deformation measuring, volcanic gas and steam emission analysis. Those are some of the methods volcanologists would employ to study a volcano. But how would you probe Indonesians’ hearts and minds to get a clear and concise account on how Indonesians feel and think about the United States of America?
You could, of course, put some scientific approaches to use. Conduct a research—specify some decent, working, advisable samples; design some thoroughly-planned interviews; gauge some quantifiable measures and test them for their significance; and construct some heuristic, rigorously scientific, or meditatively philosophical interpretations. Chances are that you would grasp a broad sense of understanding, acceptable and sufficiently illuminating for academic purposes. But the probability of missing out on hard-to-pronounce subtleties and un-pigeonholed peculiarities is also high. Just as Merapi the volcano for the late Mbah Maridjan who not only spent his entire life with her but also surrendered his love and respect to her with unparalleled devotions, even for Americans who have lived long enough in Indonesia, expressed views of Indonesians concerning America may often be of befuddling surprises—or at least, of compellingly paradoxical stances.
Take Amien Rais for an example. He is the ex-chairman of the People’s Consultative Assembly, a highly respected statesman (frequently dubbed Mr. Clean for his honest, immaculate political career’s track record), one of the most important figures in Muhammadiyah (one of Indonesia’s largest religious mass organizations), and a bright scholar and influential opinion leader who acquired his PhD at the University of Chicago. But he is also a persistent, tough, fierce, piercing, I-shall-peel-off-your-sheaths critic when it comes to the United States’ foreign policies toward Indonesia (or to be more precise, the engagements of widely-observed-as-being-American multinational corporations in Indonesia’s economy, generally believed to be endorsed by the United States’ foreign policies), despite his laudation for American democracy and the United States’ system of government—and despite his unbridled usage of casual American idioms and formal American phrases (in English) that pepper his bahasa-Indonesia speeches. In his book, Selamatkan Indonesia! Agenda Mendesak Bangsa (Save Indonesia! The Nation’s Pressing Agenda), Pak Amien, among other things, urges Indonesian Government to re-negotiate concession deals granted to the multinationals in exploitation of Indonesia’s natural resources, namely oil and mines. He would refer to Venezuela’s opposing the United States as an exemplary case. While holding his populist conviction, shared by millions of Indonesians and firmly rooted in Indonesian ethics which hold aloft compassion for the marginalized wong-ciliks, he embraces Joseph Stiglitz’s purviews to corroborate his tenets. (Therefore, although he and Ex-President Megawati Soekarnoputri are customarily considered to be coming from different ideological camps, they share a common view in this respect.)
And Pak Amien is not alone. Tune in to Indonesian national television channels, and you will find analysts, politicians, activists, journalists, even, and bureaucrats falling out for their grips of the issues (and their prestiges in the theatrical stage of public opinion) of contemporary Indonesian politics. Bearing themselves in talk-shows, debates, news-analyses, and editorial commentaries, the former four (excluding those who are related to the Government’s political camp in one way or another) put forth their perpetual criticisms which are more or less toned with concerns similar to those of Pak Amien’s. There are titillating occurrences, however, amidst the hot proceedings: the programs are now and then intermitted by commercial breaks among which ExxonMobil present their cinematographic advertisement with a voice-over sweetly narrates—in Bahasa Indonesia—the company’s “commitments” to “close partnership with Indonesians,” to “producing more energy for Indonesia,” and to “supporting education for Indonesian children.”
The critical outlooks are quite an epidemic. Government officials and politicians supporting the Government often remark that those views are held by only certain elites or certain segments of Indonesian society. Pointing out the recent results of a series of polls run by leading research institutes, including Lingkaran Survey Indonesia (LSI), which show that more than sixty percent of Indonesians are in favor of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, or SBY, administration (albeit the figure is a noteworthy decline from the robust eighty-five percent a year before), they assert that such views—which, on the offshoots, also assail the the Government that are repeatedly derided as “the agent of the West”—are a misleading token. And they might be right. But again, you could sense that the views are alive in the streets as well. Four things are in vogue among outspoken average Indonesians who proudly consider themselves well-informed citizens nowadays: marked disappointment of the economy, repugnance toward generally-thought-to-be self-interested politicians (especially members of the Parliament), derisive allegation of the perceived incompetence of the Government, and expression of some kind of suspicion and disgust toward “foreign controls of the nation’s interests”—the United States being on top of the list of those “controls.”
Even so, America is just too big and much too important for Indonesians to simply ignore—let alone to blatantly shove off. Settling on the two countries’ trade volume, you easily come to conclusion that the United States is more important to Indonesia than Indonesia is for the United States. The year 2009 statistic shows that Indonesia’s exports to the United States constituted 10.81% (3rd biggest) of its total exports, and imports from the United States 4.88% (6th biggest) of its total imports. The reverse view reveals a picture that is somewhat marginal, with the United States’ exports to Indonesia constituted 1.21% of its total exports, and imports from Indonesia 0.32% of its total imports.
It is no wonder, then, that whereas prior to President Obama’s India visit the White House vaunted business deals worth USD 10 billion with India, “supporting thousands of jobs in the United States”—made more ostentatious still by President Obama’s “promulgation” that the relationship between India and the United States is one of the “defining” relationships of the 21st century—the sense of yearning expectation of President Obama’s Indonesia visit came from the part of Indonesia. “We are reminded” said Indonesia’s Trade Under-Secretary, Mahendra Siregar, “that the United States is a big investor. We have to be careful as not to let our closeness to the region wipe out the strategic prospects of the relationship with the United States.” This led to some Indonesians’ jibes pointed mainly at the Government’s “inability to elevate the country’s bargaining power” in the face of the towering giant of the United States with its approaching bulky strides.
Nevertheless, President Obama’s coming was a huge event. It disrupted the long-running news-media coverage of the continuing eruptions of Merapi the volcano and the protracted, strenuous emergency-response to the Mentawai earthquake and tsunami—and the heart-breaking calamities the two bring about. For those who jeered and whimpered about Indonesia’s being “regarded less important” compared to India, President Obama’s compliment stating that he saw in Indonesia what he had not seen in India, that “democracy and prosperity can go hand in hand,” seemed to make up for all the hassles. —No, he stole Indonesians’ hearts already when he accepted President SBY’s stretching hand and said to President SBY, “Good to see you.” And more when on the next day in his speech at the University of Indonesia (UI) he said, “Pulang kampung, nih” (“It’s a home-coming”) and “Indonesia bagian dari diri saya” (“Indonesia is a part of me.”)—and his reference to well-known Indonesian food, to nasi goreng, bakso, sate, emping, kerupuk. “Semuanya enak.” (“All’s good.”)
Better educated Indonesians were enchanted by President Obama’s eloquent and knowledgeable asseveration of Indonesian values, hopes, ideals, progresses, and achievements. It was as though what these people usually criticized, namely piles of chronic and intricate problems pinning down the country, which span a wide range of aspects of life from politics to law-enforcement to the economy to religious practices, suddenly became a trifling issue. They were especially pleased by President Obama’s heartening parallelisms declaring that both Indonesia and the United States had fought for their respective independence, that both are of the world’s largest democracies (the United States being second, Indonesia third), and that both deal with and are strengthened by the fact that different cultures, ethnic groups, and faiths live together, symbolized by the philosophy “E pluribus unum” (“Out of many, one”) of the United States, and “Bhinneka tunggal ika” (“Unity in diversity”) of Indonesia.
Meanwhile, panning the monitor over to the other side, you see something worth noting. There were at least two rallies protesting President Obama’s coming to Indonesia spotted by the media during his delivering his speech at UI. One was reported as being held by students, and another by an Islamic pressure group called “Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia.” They seemed to be regarded as minor incidents, dwarfed by the cheers, the applause, and the flashlights of the flashy pomp. However, it will be a mistake to reckon that they are a mere paltry exception. On normal days, such as the days after when the lofty diplomatic stage is cleared and the sparkling curtain brought down, the concerns these people shouted out of their megaphones and sprawled over their flagging banners and waving posters, by degrees, will reverberate back to the minds of Indonesians, for though they occupy a rather narrow band of the spectrum of Indonesians in terms of political ideology—namely, what analysts call “Islamic revivalists”—most Indonesians are indeed Muslim in faith, and Muslims to some degree share the same interests, concerns, fear, or anger. The thorny United States-Muslim World relationship, nonetheless being earnestly addressed by President Obama with his promise to “repair” it, remains a steep issue, as admitted by President Obama himself. Political stability in Iraq, prospects of ending the war in Afghanistan, and clear and concrete directions toward a fair and just resolution of Israeli-Palestinian conflict may seem to be remote and disengaged for average Indonesians—they probably are—but since there are some measures of religious faith involved, they are inevitably hard to disregard.
At any rate, most Indonesian Muslims are moderate. This fact time and again helps shape fairly positive conceptions of the United States among Indonesians. The cases of Abdurrahman Wahid (better known by his friendly nickname, “Gus Dur”) and Nurcholish Madjid (or Cak Nur) epitomize this. For example, while there were (still are) disputes among scholars about whether parliamentary or presidential system of government suited Indonesia’s political realities best, Cak Nur, an acknowledged and revered Muslim scholar who—as did Amien Rais—had acquired his PhD at the University of Chicago, believed that the latter was of wiser preference. “It is a good thing,” he once said, “that our founding fathers adopted American wisdom.” He even would go as far as associating American government’s principle of checks-and-balances with the Quranic imperative of “tawaashau bi-l’haq” (“reciprocal reminding respecting truth”). As for Gus Dur, the Ex-President of Indonesia who for a long time led the Nahdlatul Ulama (Indonesia’s largest religious mass organization), was a controversial political activist and a well-known humanist who on an occasion succeeded in making President Bill Clinton laugh to tears with his American “dirty”-jokes.
You may remark that it is all very well with moderate Indonesian Muslims, but what about those “fundamentalists” and “jihadists”—those “hardliners”? Admittedly, those elements exist within the society. However, even the so-called “hardliners” can not be considered a monolithic entity. There are sort of schisms and rivalries among them. A few years ago, when Abu Bakar Ba’asyir called for mass resistance against the United States (the notion some interpreted as “including by means of violence”), for he believed that the United States was “Islam’s greatest enemy,” Ja’far Umar Thalib demonstrated his strong disagreement. And he is the founder of Laskar Jihad, whose band of followers once in 1999 (when Jakarta was intermittently swept with riotous rallies and civil atrocities) flocked the streets carrying swords and inflicting fear among the public. “Think of hundreds of thousands of Muslims who live in America,” he said in a televised interview.
Those are the case with leading figures. Basically, Indonesians look up to their patrons, so you may regard key figures in the society as a kind of a stem by which to assess the broader views. However, the 230 million of Indonesians are so diverse that any attempt at contriving sweeping abstractions runs the risk of oversimplification.
In spite of that, let us take an example and hear what happens in the streets. Suppose you were in Bandung, a city of about seven and half million people and another million more in its surroundings, some seventy miles south-east of Jakarta. Life in different parts of the region can be as different as you can imagine, but you could sense the presence of America almost everywhere. Up north in Dago and its vicinity, where lavish fashion stores and lush restaurants and cafés stand in a row on either sides of the streets, wealthy Jakartans’ cars, coupés, and SUVs swarm the streets where on weekends, it gets to the extent that there are intermittent gridlocks. In such situations, passangers within will either curse the traffic jam, or have their fingers mingled with their Androids and iPhones updating their Facebook statuses or tweeting messages with their Twitter accounts. Those who happen to get stuck in front of an outlet of MacDonald’s have another option: get out of their vehicles to grab some cheeseburgers, and having paid for them with their American Express cards, return. Down south in Ciwidey, a dozen or so miles away, farmers till the wet and muddy land in the stretching paddy-fields where not many years ago, they still rode their hoes which were pulled (respectively) by a pair of water-buffaloes (they use tractors now)—striking their whips against the puddles while chanting ancient Sundanese field-holler rhymes. But even then, some of them would take a break at noon to set about the noon-prayer, after having dropped by at a warung, a village canteen, to sip some Coca-Cola.
Back up north again, in Karang Layung, a couple of miles westward of Dago, a radio station, KLCBS, broadcasts jazz music—its selection ranging from Duke Ellington to Charlie Parker to John Coltrane to Miles Davis to Chick Corea to Wynton Marsalis to Jamie Cullum—interspersed by the voice of one of its announcers presenting stories from Islamic traditions mixed with short prayers and quotes of Quranic verses. Half a dozen or so miles south, in Soreang, another radio station, Mayapada, airs the preaching of a local Muslim scholar, succeeded by a music program playing popular Sundanese songs among which is a song sung by three lady singers mentioning Madonna and Demi Moore in the lyric. Downtown at Alun-alun, the city square, around the Great Mosque of Bandung, men in Muslims’ koko-and-sarung outfits blend with those who wear batik shirts and others with their Levi’s jeans (genuine or fake), gathering for the Friday-prayer. In the buildings that parade along the Asia-Afrika street, eastward of the mosque, white-collar workers are getting ready to do the same, leaving their offices of banks, financial services, and trading companies, where the release of the United States’ Department of Labor’s non-farm payroll data can be as hot a topic as the Merapi and Mentawai disasters, or the imprisonment of Ariel at the Kebon Waru penitentiary for his supposedly sex-video affair.
Not far from the heart of the city, on the Veteran street, bikers assemble at the headquarter of Harley Davidson Indonesia, Bandung branch. Down south-west in the outskirts of the city, in densely populated Cijerah, ojeg (commercial motorcycle ride) riders, with their bright-colored polyesther waistcoat over their worn-out t-shirts printed on which photographs of Bon Jovi or Kurt Cobain, huddle around the parking yard of the market. The pounding of the drumbeats of Rihanna’s “Only Girl (in the World)” playing in a store nearby mixes up in an ear-wrenching jumble with the heavily-synthesized tamtam throbs of the dangdut song “Keong Racun,” made a popular culture phenomenon by Shinta and Jojo with their lip-sync stunt on YouTube. Angkots (“angkutan kota” or “city transport,” minivans turned public transports) go hither and thither. One of them, a large sticker of Sylvester Stallone on the glass-pane of its door, pulls over in front of a street vendor’s batagor stand which displays on its wagon the Arabic text of “Basmalah,” the opening verse of the Quran. High school girls with their white-shirt-and-grey-skirt uniforms get off the angkot, still loudly gossiping about Justin Bieber and Robert Pattinson, leaving the staring of disbelief of factory workers inside, and a mother in jilbab and brownish khaki civil servant uniform, carrying a Tupperware lunch-box of her little boy who sits beside her, with his Scooby Doo t-shirt and Spongebob Squarepants backpack. Some two hundred yards out, somebody dries a washed bed-sheet in the sunlight, in front of a slightly dilapidated two-story house. It is of the design of the stars-and-stripes of American flag.
The late Marshall Green, the United States’ Ambassador to Indonesia during the turbulent years of President Soekarno (Indonesians refer to him as Bung Karno) era, prior to the downfall of the great leader, when the proudest boast was not “Civis Romanus sum,” or “Ich bin ein Berliner, ” but “Go to hell with your aid!” wrote this passage in his memoir, Indonesia: Crisis and Transformation: 1965-1968:
All along the way from the airport were graffiti and signs screaming “Green Go Home,” but under one of those signs someone had scrawled in lipstick, “and take me with you.”
And the song remains the same. Many Indonesians take a kind of pride in expressing their disgust toward the United States, ceaselessly pointing out that America is nothing but a list of a series of offenses. At the same time, most Indonesians, including those mentioned, cherish their adoration for America as a kind of guilty pleasure, now openly admitted now tacitly enjoyed.
CeuksimangAdé 