Print labels, leaflets, broadcast, bullhorns, every available media to promote the perfectly false propaganda that the junta leaders are solely responsible for the help that is arriving. Stinks, but it might work.
We (the world) have the supplies and the equipment in place to render immediate aid. It was sent in the general direction on the heels of the typhoon. The process of dropping food is long established and can be done “pallet style” or individually.
What other priorities? I don’t understand your question because we’re looking at 100,000 people dying in a region that supplies the country’s grain supplies. If the people and the region die then the rest of the country dies.
In the other Burmese-cyclone thread, I posted:
“We have reports here that the aid that IS getting in, the main junta general has been stamping his name on the cases, so the people think it’s coming from him. This is a big reason they don’t want aid workers in; makes it harder to take the credit.”
The Burmese junta really are among the most despicable human beings I’ve ever known of.
According to Bush, Governor Blanco has to request the help before FEMA can go in.
Ooops! Nevermind, wrong disaster.
Yah, it’s a lot to expect from a Governor. Maybe Dubba should have faxed over instructions on how to dial a phone.
Oh, I dunno, she stonewalled even after being told by FEMA to make the official request, maybe she really didn’t know how to dial a phone and was just covering that up?
All I ask for in this debate is consistency. If you feel that the world should force relief into Burma, that’s an argument that can be made, it has merit. Still, the underlying question remains: Do we have an obligation to intervene in a sovereign country? Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people are dead/dying in Burma. On the other hand, no one debates that Saddam Hussein was a murderous tyrant who poison-gassed his own subjects and killed tens if not hundreds of thousands of people. One of the stated reasons for us going into Iraq was to stop that. That didn’t turn out so well. If we seek to force aid into Burma, we’ll have to do the exact same thing: depose the rulers and administer the country ourselves, in order to get aid to the people. I do not see any real substantive difference between the two. Argue we should go in, argue that we have no right to. Either way is defensible, but as I said, all I ask is that one be consistent. Anyone who supports forcing aid into Burma has no leg to stand on if they seek to oppose intervention in Iraq. OTOH, one who opposes the Iraq war will naturally oppose intervention in Burma. You can’t have it both ways without being a hypocrite.
I am not sure which action (or inaction) is best right now but Weirddave I think that you make a false analogy.
First off forcing help in Burma does not require deposing the military junta; it merely requires ignoring their authority. It does not require destruction of the infrastructure of a country; it requires trying to keep some those who make up that infrastructure alive. It does not require a long term commitment to rebuild a country and to provide security; merely a short-term intervention of getting food, clean water, and basic shelter to where it needs to be to prevent additional deaths by the many many thousands.
Secondly, I did believe that intervention in Iraq was a stupid thing to do, but that does not mean that I believe that any intervention anywhere at any time is ill-advised, including ones that do require deposing rulers and taking over the administration of a country for ourselves. For example I think that doing the same in Afganistan was the right thing to do. Clearly the burden of proof is that the need to intervene is great and urgent and outweighs the potential risks and costs.
Would we feel the need to intervene if Burmese leadership was running extermination camps that would, if allowed to continue, murder hundreds of thousands of their own citizens? Especially if we could intervene as part of an international effort and at little risk to our own interests and citizens? I would hope so.
We know that the leadership’s continued obstruction of help will more passively cause a similar death toll. Is that really such a different circumstance? How and why?
Because that wasn’t our real reason; we knew it ( whatever lies we tell ourselves ), they knew it. We have never cared about the welfare or lives of the Iraqis. And we haven’t acted in a way consistant with well meaning people, but as corrupt conquerers; any Iraqi sitting in the dark because the infrastructure is still a wreck knows better than to believe that we were well meaning. We never meant well, so of course it didn’t turn out well.
In the later case, we might actually be trying to help people. Not that I expect us to do so.
Yes, you can. Aid to Burma is aid to Burma. Iraq was just conquest; for our benefit, and their detriment. Imperialism and aid aren’t the same thing. Dropping food isn’t the same as wrecking cities.
DSeid, the big problem with what you suggest there is that you can’t just ignore the Junta. They have all the military power and will fight to the death to preserve it. Moreover, they’ll probably go the brutal killy exterminatey route once we left, just to try and stamp out any trace of our presence, including destroying all the help we give and killing anyone emboldened to speak out. It must be all-or-nothing.
Regardless of what you seem to think, DT, you have no idea of what a corrupt conquerer is. Period. End of story.
You’re assuming that the junta would just sit idly by and let us deliver aid to the victims of the cyclone. That’s a huge, unwarranted assumption. They would resist. Even if they didn’t actively resist, and all we did was fly planes over and drop supplies, there is no way we could ensure that those supplies got to the people who needed them or keep them out of the hands of agents of the junta once they left the planes. No, to get any kind of effective relief where it’s needed, we’d have to have either the cooperation of local officials or go in and do it ourselves. To believe otherwise is foolish.
Who cares what the motivations are? If we send troops to Burma to clean up the junta, Really Bad Shit is going to happen. How many times do we have to do this before we realize that people DONT WANT foreign soldiers in their country to overthrow their government?
Nothing we can do will remove the junta and install a hippy representative legislature with free and honest open elections, etc. etc. People have to assert that right for themselves, and plenty of people would rather live under military rule than go through the trauma of violent revolution.
This one seems worth a try. If it will get supplies and aid where it is needed, I’d be willing to turn a blind eye to some creative story telling about where the aid came from. “Your loving leaders have, out of the goodness of their hearts, procured this food/water/medicine and hired these workers to help you out in your time of need.”
“Your generals pumped this water and slaughtered these animals with their bare hands. They sat long hours in front of sewing machines making this clothing. They chopped down trees and hand-carved the planks that were used to make these crates, and then they assembled these crates. They mixed the paint for the stencils on the sides of these crates. And they chewed with their own mouths the wood pulp to make the paper on which these words were printed. Yes, indeedy, there is no task too great for these generals to accomplish in the name of their people.”
Like that?
Wrong. We are conquerors; we are corrupt. Notoriously so. Our actions in Iraq have been an outright parody of the corrupt conquerer.
Our motivations matter because they affect what we do, and how people respond. If we are not well meaning, the result will be bad no matter what the junta does; even they cooperated, the result would be bad, because of us, not them. And the population in general will respond according to those perceived motivations; they would support the junta, because we have proven that we are NOT benevolent, nor trustworthy, and we are worse for the people we “help” than the dictators. And they’d be right; we’d never actually try to help the populace with something like this; if we did use force, it would only be because we intended to harm or exploit them.
But if we were there just to deliver aid, we WOULDN’T be there to overthrow the government. The main reason it won’t work is because the general populace will know better than to believe that we have any desire to help, or any concern for their lives, or any intention of leaving. Just as the Iraqis know. We don’t have the moral capital to convince people we mean well.
Correct! It’s all about American. Because, you know, the US is the only nation offering any aid at all, and since we are all evil and corrupt that is the reason why both the (starving and disease ridden) populace and the (fat cat) Junta types distrust us…
Oh…wait. This is another DT rant with no bearing on reality. Stop the presses…
-XT
Der Trihs has more than a few nuggets of reality in his rant.
Nasty little military dictatorships are not known for their trust of others. Sometimes this lack of trust has a grounding in reality (see, for example, the actions of much of the Western world over the past 50 years or so).
The Junta does not trust the US, and the US DOES have the best capacity for managing a massive relief operation. However, the US ALSO has the capacity for managing a massive invasion operation as well. No matter how many times we tell the nasty little military dictatorship that we are just coming by to deliver food, they are going to see the 6th Fleet sitting there and wonder if they are next on the governmental cleansing operation.
Given that a few other nations have joined the US in places like Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan - our little nasty military dictatorship won’t trust them either.
We have a local government that does not want the US, or much of the West, there in any large capacity.
If we DO go in with the appropriate level of protection for our aid workers, we get a nice little war.
If we just deliver food to the docks, we give even more power to the afore-mentioned nasty military dictatorship. They will use that power to feed their own team, and continue to starve their malcontents. In addition, the local government really does not have much in the way of capacity to deliver the aid that we provide.
It is horrible how many people are dead.
It is even more horrible how many more will die because it is a poor nation.
It is also horrible that the US is shunned by some nations when we offer aid (justified or not).
It is especially horrible that in some places aid workers can not do their job in peace.
The US has to decide when and where to offer help. In the case of a nation that does not WANT our help, I am inclined to keep our aid work local. Since the Junta does not want us, let us send our aid to places in the US where there is hunger. Let us send our aid to the Gulf Coast that is STILL rebuilding. Let us keep our military out of it, and if private aid groups want to go in - good luck and please sign this form showing that you are doing with the understanding that the US will not bail you out if it goes even further to hell.
That high speed sound you heard just over your head? It was the point, flying right by you…
-XT
No, it’s about America because I was responding to Weirddave’s attempt to compare intervention in Burma to the American dominated conquest of Iraq.
Most likely, yes. Why WOULD they trust us ? Yes, the junta are a bunch of evil bastards; but in this case, they would be a bunch of evil bastards with perfectly rational and even moral reasons to distrust and oppose us.
Obviously the point is to obscure for any to get. Let me be clear then…I DON’T GIVE A FLYING FUCK IF THEY DON’T TRUST AMERICA! It’s not only American aid that is being foot dragged on for gods sake! It’s EVERYONE’S aid!
Sheesh. It’s NOT only about American. They don’t want American aid? Fine by me. Don’t want America involved at all in this? What the fuck is the UN for anyway?? Are you saying that THEY shouldn’t be allowed or able to help either? Or is this yet another of your myriad Anti-America (regardless of subject) rants?
-XT