Sad, sad news

[Texsox]

You keep giving the junta more stuff, they keep getting richer. What a plan...

 

Are you also suggesting to keep giving them more stuff? They are an independent nation and overthrowing the government would be interesting.

 

Sorry you do not like the Katrina reference. Two nations react to a natural disaster, seems like a fair comparison. Aid equipment was staged too far away or not at all. Aid was refused. The Red Cross does not accept donations of clothing and supplies, only cash, and then misused the money collected. We responded waaaaay better then this government, but again, we could have done better. And we will. We almost always learn from our mistakes and improve round two.

[bmags]

Are you also suggesting to keep giving them more stuff? They are an independent nation and overthrowing the government would be interesting.

 

Sorry you do not like the Katrina reference. Two nations react to a natural disaster, seems like a fair comparison. Aid equipment was staged too far away or not at all. Aid was refused. The Red Cross does not accept donations of clothing and supplies, only cash, and then misused the money collected. We responded waaaaay better then this government, but again, we could have done better. And we will. We almost always learn from our mistakes and improve round two.

 

well, Tex,a much better comparison here would be chernobyl probably.

[Texsox]

well, Tex,a much better comparison here would be chernobyl probably.

 

I'm trying to think of a disaster where the relief effort could not have been any better. It can always be better. No two are exactly alike and we learn more and more from each one.

[bmags]

I'm trying to think of a disaster where the relief effort could not have been any better. It can always be better. No two are exactly alike and we learn more and more from each one.

 

but this is acting as if the effort is there, and whether I can take offense to a government putting their public image before saving lives and helping their people.

 

Calling what Myanmar's doing a rescue effort at all is a slight to the definition of effort. This is straight evil. You can't convince me of anything less. Their people are having to throw dead people in the rivers and are starving, and what are they doing? Hawking the aid and selling it for profit, giving the people rotten rice, and re labeling.

 

What can I do? Yes I will continue raising aid. But what can I do? As an American, I will raise my voice to say that this is unacceptable. Whether or not it does anything, it's better than staying silent and saying, yeah, well they could do better but tough situation they are in!

[Texsox]

Agreed.

[EvilMonkey]

I think we should airdrop aid packages, each containing rice, some of those fabulous UN biscuits, an AK-47, a few hundred rounds of ammo and a map to the capital.

[StrangeSox]

Perhaps I am not explaining myself properly.

 

My theory, I've had enough to eat, pass it on.

Your theory. f*** 'em stop the aid so everyone starves.

 

And stopping aid helps how?

 

But they won't. They'll just keep hording it for themselves or selling it on the black market. They're not going to give out the aide for free to those who need it.

[Texsox]

I think we should airdrop aid packages, each containing rice, some of those fabulous UN biscuits, an AK-47, a few hundred rounds of ammo and a map to the capital.

 

What, you don't like American made M16s? Pinko Commie bastard

[Texsox]

But they won't. They'll just keep hording it for themselves or selling it on the black market. They're not going to give out the aide for free to those who need it.

 

That leaves cutting off aid. Tough decision. Survival comes in threes. Three minutes without oxygen, thee days without water, and three weeks without food. I'm not certain there is time to put together a solution that goes around the regime.

[StrangeSox]

That leaves cutting off aid. Tough decision. Survival comes in threes. Three minutes without oxygen, thee days without water, and three weeks without food. I'm not certain there is time to put together a solution that goes around the regime.

 

Going through the regime only benefits the regime and doesn't help those who need help. Giving aid to make ourselves feel better about the situation when we know very well that the aid will just be confiscated by the regime doesn't make much sense to me. Direct air drops might be another solution.

[Texsox]

Going through the regime only benefits the regime and doesn't help those who need help. Giving aid to make ourselves feel better about the situation when we know very well that the aid will just be confiscated by the regime doesn't make much sense to me. Direct air drops might be another solution.

 

 

Bypassing the regime may be the last ditch effort. But they control the military and could just as easily control the supply that way.

 

Sadly, the most efficient way to save lives is buy off the government with direct US aid in exchange for the humanitarian relief getting through.

[southsider2k5]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/opinion/...amp;oref=slogin

 

Aid at the Point of a Gun

 

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Article Tools Sponsored By

By ROBERT D. KAPLAN

Published: May 14, 2008

 

Mae Sot, Thailand

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Harry Campbell

 

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Times Topics: Cyclone Nargis

Times Topics: Myanmar

Readers' Comments

 

"Six-gun diplomacy to render aid... is an unthinkable option. "

 

Frederick Stahl, Australia

 

* Read Full Comment »

 

MORE than 60,000 people may have died as a result of Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, and at least 1.5 million are homeless or otherwise in desperate need of assistance. The Burmese military junta, one of the most morally repulsive in the world, has allowed in only a trickle of aid supplies. The handful of United States Air Force C-130 flights from Utapao Air Base here in Thailand is little more than symbolic, given the extent of the need.

 

France’s foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, has spoken of the possibility of an armed humanitarian intervention, and there is an increasing degree of chatter about the possibility of an American-led invasion of the Irrawaddy River Delta.

 

As it happens, American armed forces are now gathered in large numbers in Thailand for the annual multinational military exercise known as Cobra Gold. This means that Navy warships could pass from the Gulf of Thailand through the Strait of Malacca and north up the Bay of Bengal to the Irrawaddy Delta. It was a similar circumstance that had allowed for Navy intervention after the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004.

 

Because oceans are vast and even warships travel comparatively slowly, one should not underestimate the advantage that fate has once again handed us. For example, a carrier strike group, or even a smaller Marine-dominated expeditionary strike group headed by an amphibious ship, could get close to shore and ferry troops and supplies to the most devastated areas on land.

 

The magic of this is that an enormous amount of assistance can be provided while maintaining a small footprint on shore, greatly reducing the chances of a clash with the Burmese armed forces while nevertheless dealing a hard political blow to the junta. Concomitantly, drops can be made from directly overhead by the Air Force without the need to militarily occupy any Burmese airports.

 

In other words, this is militarily doable. The challenge is the politics, both internationally and inside Myanmar. Because one can never assume an operation will go smoothly, it is vital that the United States carry out such a mission only as part of a coalition including France, Australia and other Western powers. Of course, the approval of the United Nations Security Council would be best, but China — the junta’s best friend — would likely veto it.

 

And yet China — along with India, Thailand and, to a lesser extent, Singapore — has been put in a very uncomfortable diplomatic situation. China and India are invested in port enlargement and energy deals with Myanmar. Thailand’s democratic government has moved closer to the junta for the sake of logging and other business ventures. Singapore, a city-state that must get along with everybody in the region, is suspected of acting as a banker for the Burmese generals. All these countries quietly resent the ineffectual moral absolutes with which the United States, a half a world away, approaches Myanmar. Nonetheless, the disaster represents an opportunity for Washington. By just threatening intervention, the United States puts pressure on Beijing, New Delhi and Bangkok to, in turn, pressure the Burmese generals to open their country to a full-fledged foreign relief effort. We could do a lot of good merely by holding out the possibility of an invasion.

 

The other challenge we face lies within Myanmar. Because a humanitarian invasion could ultimately lead to the regime’s collapse, we would have to accept significant responsibility for the aftermath. And just as the collapse of the Berlin Wall was not supposed to lead to ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia, and the liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein was not supposed to lead to civil war, the fall of the junta would not be meant to lead to the collapse of the Burmese state. But it might.

 

About a third of Myanmar’s 47 million people are ethnic minorities, who have a troubled historical relationship with the dominant group, the Burmans. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the heroine of the democracy movement, is an ethnic Burman just like the generals, and her supporters are largely focused on the Burman homeland. Meanwhile, the Chins, Kachins, Karennis, Karens, Shans and other hill tribes have been fighting against the government. The real issue in Myanmar, should the regime fall, would be less about forging democracy than a compromise between the Burmans and the other ethnic groups.

 

Of course, Myanmar is not the Balkans or Iraq, where ethnic and sectarian rivalries were smothered under a carapace of authoritarianism, only to erupt later on. Myanmar has suffered insurgencies for 60 years now, and may be ripe for a compromise under a civilian government. But neither can we be naïve. Just because Myanmar is not Yugoslavia doesn’t mean it isn’t like Russia; it is a mini-empire ruled by the ethnic-Burman military that could crumble into its constituent mountainous parts, especially as the democracy advocates have demonstrated little ability to run a country. Here in Mae Sot, a center for non-Burman ethnic dissident groups, complaints over the disorganization of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s movement are rife.

 

It seems like a simple moral decision: help the survivors of the cyclone. But liberating Iraq from an Arab Stalin also seemed simple and moral. (And it might have been, had we planned for the aftermath.) Sending in marines and sailors is the easy part; but make no mistake, the very act of our invasion could land us with the responsibility for fixing Burma afterward.

 

Robert D. Kaplan is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and a fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington.

[Texsox]

It's never easy.

[EvilMonkey]

What, you don't like American made M16s? Pinko Commie bastard

I would, but the people would probably have an easier time finding ammo for the AK over there, and the AK handles dirt better than the M16.

[Texsox]

I would, but the people would probably have an easier time finding ammo for the AK over there, and the AK handles dirt better than the M16.

Exactly why we give them M16 and SELL them ammo

[knightni]

Even sadder

[EvilMonkey]

Even sadder

Spysat pics of the dead people laying in the delta would be a good thing to show up right about now.