Time Magazine: Forget Iran … Invade Burma!
For the past year Burma has been a hotbed of turmoil and injustice and cruelty upon the tiny country’s civilians by the government and the military junta.
But the MSM has all but completely buried the incidents of beating and killing of protesting civilians in the streets of Burma sanctioned by the government.
Then along comes a mega typhoon, virtually erasing what could end up being 100,000 downtrodden Burmese people that the MSM and the world in general didn’t give a flying f*ck about the day before the wind, rain, and sea flooded in over them.
So now, in addition to moral equivalence, we must suffer the left’s selective “warmongering” …
This is what you get from people who lead by emotion and feelings … and NOT by standards and forethought.
TIME:
By Romesh Ratnesar
The disaster in Burma presents the world with perhaps its most serious humanitarian crisis since the 2004 Asian tsunami. By most reliable estimates, close to 100,000 people are dead. Delays in delivering relief to the victims, the inaccessibility of the stricken areas and the poor state of Burma’s infrastructure and health systems mean that number is sure to rise. With as many as 1 million people still at risk, it is conceivable that the death toll will, within days, approach that of the entire number of civilians killed in the genocide in Darfur.
So what is the world doing about it? Not much. The military regime that runs Burma initially signaled it would accept outside relief, but has imposed so many conditions on those who would actually deliver it that barely a trickle has made it through. Aid workers have been held at airports. U.N. food shipments have been seized. U.S. naval ships packed with food and medicine idle in the Gulf of Thailand, waiting for an all-clear that may never come.
Burma’s rulers have relented slightly, agreeing Friday to let in supplies and perhaps even some foreign relief workers. The government says it will allow a US C-130 transport plane to land inside Burma Monday. But it’s hard to imagine a regime this insular and paranoid accepting robust aid from the U.S. military, let alone agreeing to the presence of U.S. Marines on Burmese soil — as Thailand and Indonesia did after the tsunami. The trouble is that the Burmese haven’t shown the ability or willingness to deploy the kind of assets needed to deal with a calamity of this scale — and the longer Burma resists offers of help, the more likely it is that the disaster will devolve beyond anyone’s control. “We’re in 2008, not 1908,” says Jan Egeland, the former U.N. emergency relief coordinator. “A lot is at stake here. If we let them get away with murder we may set a very dangerous precedent.”
That’s why it’s time to consider a more serious option: invading Burma. Some observers, including former USAID director Andrew Natsios, have called on the U.S. to unilaterally begin air drops to the Burmese people regardless of what the junta says. The Bush Administration has so far rejected the idea — “I can’t imagine us going in without the permission of the Myanmar government,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday — but it’s not without precedent: as Natsios pointed out to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. has facilitated the delivery of humanitarian aid without the host government’s consent in places like Bosnia and Sudan.
A coercive humanitarian intervention would be complicated and costly. During the 2004 tsunami, some 24 U.S. ships and 16,000 troops were deployed in countries across the region; the mission cost the U.S. $5 million a day. Ultimately, the U.S. pledged nearly $900 million to tsunami relief. (By contrast, it has offered just $3.25 million to Burma.) But the risks would be greater this time: the Burmese government’s xenophobia and insecurity make them prone to view U.S. troops — or worse, foreign relief workers — as hostile forces. (Remember Black Hawk Down?) Even if the U.S. and its allies made clear that their actions were strictly for humanitarian purposes, it’s unlikely the junta would believe them. “You have to think it through — do you want to secure an area of the country by military force? What kinds of potential security risks would that create?” says Egelend. “I can’t imagine any humanitarian organization wanting to shoot their way in with food.”
So what other options exist? Retired General William Nash of the Council on Foreign Relations says the U.S. should first pressure China to use its influence over the junta to get them to open up and then supply support to the Thai and Indonesian militaries to carry out relief missions. “We can pay for it — we can provide repair parts to the Indonesians so they can get their Air Force up. We can lend the them two C-130s and let them paint the Indonesian flag on them,” Nash says. “We have to get the stuff to people who can deliver it and who the Burmese government will accept, even if takes an extra day or two and even if it’s not as efficient as the good old U.S. military.” Egeland advocates that the U.N. Security Council take punitive steps short of war, such as freezing the regime’s assets and issuing warrants for the arrest of individual junta members if they were to leave the country. Similar measures succeeded in getting the government of Ivory Coast to let in foreign relief teams in 2002, Egelend says.
And if that fails? “It’s important for the rulers to know the world has other options,” Egeland says. “If there were, say, the threat of a cholera epidemic that could claim hundreds of thousands of lives and the government was incapable of preventing it, then maybe yes — you would intervene unilaterally.” But by then, it could be too late. The cold truth is that states rarely undertake military action unless their national interests are at stake; and the world has yet to reach a consensus about when, and under what circumstances, coercive interventions in the name of averting humanitarian disasters are permissible. As the response to the 2004 tsunami proved, the world’s capacity for mercy is limitless. But we still haven’t figured out when to give war a chance.
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This was all the talk on the radio last week. So what are we going to do? Stand idly by and let thousnds of people perish or bust in and make the junta do our and the UN’s bidding?
People have the same question regarding Darfur. What are we doing about it? Nothing…
And Somalia? We gave Somalia a chance. They blew it.
What’s the difference here?
If the junta in Burma wants to stop aid from comming to their people, then WTF can we do about it?
Invade and make the junta go away? Not likely.
You want to fight a running battle while C-130’s do touch and goes to get in supplies and aid? Then what happens to said aid when we leave?
Its a complicated question.
May 10th, 2008 at 3:36 pmOption 1: Invade, kick ass, set up a civilized gov’t and stop the starvation and slaughter. Response: Be called the “world’s bully” for thinking we have the right to impose our values and systems on others.
Option 2: Send aid. The aid is confiscated and sold on the black market to support the shitbag gov’t. Happens every day.
Option 3: Do nothing like with Darfur. Get critised by the same assholes from response #1.
I’d vote for #1 except for one reason. There are so many places that we should invade-to-save it would become our new career in life. We’d get shit on by the rest of the cowardly planet and only the history books would acknowledge our generosity of spirit.
Just as with Iraq.
May 10th, 2008 at 4:01 pmDan and Kevin
great assessments. This is a very fuc*ked up world we live in and as much as we would like to help everybody i dont know if thats possible. there are so many places around the globe that need our assistance.
Sudan
Pakistan
Burma
Iran
Iraq
Afghanistan
Saudi Arabia
Venezuela
good God that is scary. I am just warming up. but of course im preaching to the choir here. who knows the right answer, i sure dont
May 10th, 2008 at 4:19 pmSend in Stallone!!!
May 10th, 2008 at 6:20 pmMaybe Burma’s neighbors can talk some sense into them.
May 10th, 2008 at 6:30 pmJust a bunch of criminals running the show. Beyond sad.
It’s too late now…alot more people are going to die. Sad…very sad.
May 11th, 2008 at 3:49 amYea, the left pisses me off. They send us into humanitarian style missions like Haiti and Somalia in half assed fashion where backward countries don’t want our help. They send us into the middle of a civil war like in Bosnia/Kosovo, siding with the muslim minority. Those civil wars needed to happen to restore a balance to the region after Tito’s meddling…but they were cut short by our influence and will now be allowed to fester below the surface for future generations to solve. They supposedly have the moral fortitude to stand up and proudly say that we need to inject ourselves into the Darfur civil war situation. Now we have to do our righteous duty and invade Burma to stop their government from killing off a good portion of their own people, be they protesting Monks or cyclone victims.
…But defend America from a whacked out religious cult like the Taliban that harbored leaders that attacked American interests overseas? Nah…not until they attack us at home first. (the left did get upset when the Taliban blew up the budda statues tho, might have gotten their permission to take em down to save those statues!) Defend America from a brutal tyrant that invaded its neighbors and threatened america and its allies through statements and by supplying known terrorist groups with money and safehaven?? Nah, wouldn’t want to do that either.
May 11th, 2008 at 7:16 am“We’re in 2008, not 1908,” says Jan Egeland, the former U.N. emergency relief coordinator. “A lot is at stake here. If we let them get away with murder we may set a very dangerous precedent.”
Setting a bad precedent is what the UN is good at; why change?
May 11th, 2008 at 7:55 amGood take Kboomr. Cause and effect of BDS = Damned if we do, damned if we don’t.
Send the elder Carter to Burma for a little home construction and “dialogue”. Maybe we would get lucky and he would piss the Burmese government off as much as he pisses off his own. At the least it would keep Jimmuh from sticking his nose in Israel’s biz for awhile.
May 11th, 2008 at 9:33 am