The death of a cynical Washington Post editor

The death of former Washington Post editorial writer Stephen Rosenfeld at age 77 has prompted the usual praise heaped on any well-respected insider at his passing. But little note has been made of Rosenfeld's role in steering the Post to the neoconservative harbor where it's now anchored. Nor have the eulogies said much about his readiness to defend mass murders when committed in the interests of U.S. foreign policy. Instead, the stories have focused on his intelligence, warmth and generosity. It's worth noting, however, how Rosenfeld helped shape Official Washington's tolerance of butchery as long as the targets of the bloodletting -- including unarmed men, women and children -- were first deemed "communists" or given some other despised label. Typical of Rosenfeld's moral compass was his defense of Indonesia's genocide-style extermination of alleged communists, many of whom were ethnic Chinese. The story of that fearsome slaughter dated back to 1965 when pro-U.S. General Suharto overthrew leftist President Sukarno and unleashed a wave of killings that ultimately left a half million Indonesians dead, events later fictionalized in the movie, "Year of Living Dangerously."