I actually don't know the details for East Timor, but, presumably Carter didn't personally sponsor this, like as a hobby after he was President or something - instead it was US government policy and it remained US government policy to turn a blind eye to what was happening in East Timor and presumably as the US President receives high quality global intelligence briefings Carter will have had a pretty good idea what it was turning a blind eye to.
It seems an unfortunate truth that moral purity is impossible for the leaders of the largest countries. Every decision is made with complex trade-offs and regrettable consequences even for the “right” choice.
It’s hard for me to understand how holding people to account for sponsoring genocides means holding them to an impossible standard of moral purity. This strikes me as a straw man.
If you don't know the details why are you speaking on it? Jimmy Carter increased US military aid to Indonesia as we knew they were committing genocide and selling donated Red Cross supplies. 90% of the weapons Suharto used in the invasion of East Timor were supplied by the United States. And we were responsible for the coup that put Suharto in power.
You can spin it however you want to try and defend poor Jimmy Carter, but I know Americans would not make the same effort for, say, Xi Xinping.
I can't speak for Americans, but I'm sure to some extent Xi Jinping (that's who you meant right?) is railroaded by the existing situation of the PRC. That of course doesn't magically make him not responsible for things done by China under his control - for say, Hong Kong's "National Security Law", or the attempted expansion of Chinese control in the South China Sea not to mention the Uighurs, but it's also not as though he seized power one afternoon and China's policies changed overnight to reflect his personal preferences. We are a product of our society.
For example China can't just wake up on a Tuesday morning and become a thriving modern industrialised democracy. Even if Xi Jinping desperately wanted that (and I've no reason to think he does) it can't be done, so there's a huge gap between what you might wish and what these leaders can actually do with their power. Do you think that East Timor would have been stopped if Gerald Ford had won the 1976 election instead of Carter? Would he have picked up the phone and said "Sorry, changed my mind, if you don't pack up and leave East Timor I will bomb you into the stone age"? No?
Lots of countries tacitly supported Indonesia. Australia basically wanted to split the loot, which is in some sense morally worse than selling them arms; the UK sold guns and military aircraft to Indonesia during the fighting; India argued that such invasions are legitimate (and like the US it closed its eyes to the torture, rape and murder) because of its own history of such de-colonial activities. Lots of blame to go around so far as I can see. Carter deserves some share of that blame.
