Indonesia put in its "claim" in 1978 to East Timor, not fifty years ago. The other two were from roughly the same time, I believe, although I think Acheh was formally annexed slightly afterwards (Ill check that and make sure). I post that only to set the historical record accurately, according to the information I found on the web about the situation. Nevertheless, Buddhas statement does have some small grain of truth to it. There must be a score or so of countries the size of walnuts that appear and disappear on a regular basis; theyre simply too small to register on the radar, as it were. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, I found myself wondering one night how the world media, had it existed then as it does now, would have viewed Jackson's "Manifest Destiny" speech and the imperial assumption of the western half of the North American continent. They really arent that different, you know. We saw land that we wanted, and we quite simply moved in and took over, without much regard for the people already living there. We, of course, viewed this as a good thing: it gave us access to almost unlimited natural resources, land, countless new harbours for trade. So Im curious: what makes our "manifest destiny" good and Iraqs expansion bad? What makes one countrys conquest by force historically acceptable and anothers not?