And what good, precisely, would it do?
Assuming that the authorities did not immediately confiscate it, and assuming they don’t kill anyone who touches it, and assuming you can get enough of those balloons, you will never in a million years get enough food in that way to make a difference.
The Berlin airlift was done with DC3’s and DC4’s. Not only could we do it we have the equipment to do it with. A single C-17 has 28 TIMES the capacity of a DC-3 and it’s designed for air dropping supplies. A fleet of 20 C-17’s would be like 560 DC-3’s and represent 3.4 million pounds of supplies every time they took off.
Myammar can’t feed the people we’re talking about. They don’t have the man power to distribute food let alone hunt down food packets.
Not hurricane-related, but a good overview of why the generals are winning is here.
Also not hurricane-related, but this seems to be a good thread for further updates on the junta for little snippets that don’t warrant a whole new one.
It seems the junta is now launching cyber attacks on websites of exiled journalists. See here.
The Berlin Airlift was done for one single city, and did not, in fact, provide sufficient food (The Russians cut power and squeezed it but couldn’t afford to completely stop all trade). And yes, it would be very easy for them to punish people who got the food.
Not really. Just include an M-16 in every box of Wheaties. Starving people do not need much incentive to fight back.
Bottom line, if we wanted to feed Burma we could fucking feed Burma. The goverment is in no position to resist. It’s not even a 3rd world country. Anything they might send up in the form of aircraft would return via gravitational pull and not by the Bernoulli principle.
It’s a function of will power. We interviened in Bosnia, Serbia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. We didn’t intervene in Rwanda or Sudan. Depends on what people are willing to support.
The Burmese military is stronger than many think and gets a lot of resources poured into it. It’s been fighting a handful of different rebellions for decades now, and the paranoid junta is convinced the US plans an Iraq-style invasion and has therefore drawn up contingency plans to deal with it once it comes. The Burmese people would love to see it happen, but any intervention would not be a walk in the park. Even food drops would probably be taken as an act of war by the government. I’m not saying it couldn’t be done, just that logistically it would take a lot of planning.
Yes, Magiver, of course it could be done. You could do almost anything. But you can’t do it easily. It would take huge resources, time, large-scale military preparations, the pacification (through force and control) of the military, probably the death of the junta leaders. It would cost a fortune, and panic the Chinese, who would do God-knows-what, and it would take time. You seem to be of the opinion that we can fly a few planes over and drop a few boxes of food and everything will be fine. These are serious people. They mean business. They will commit mass murder if they have must to stay in power. They are also paranoid and vicious and have a relatively large military positioned in some of the roughest, worst terrain around for military invasions.
They’ve already committed mass murder by not feeding their people. And yes, I do believe it would be a walk in the park to eliminate their entire military structure. Iraq had the 3rd largest standing army at the beginning of the Gulf war and it was physically destroyed in days. We wouldn’t have to support a ground war beyond supplying small arms and food. The Junta would fall like the collapse of the Soviet Union.
You’re right, it won’t happen. The world at large doesn’t care. The UN is useless in these matters. There was a time when the world would support something like a Berlin Airlift but the days of the United as world policeman are fading fast. Burma is just a place on a map that needs a name and currently that name is Myanmar. If we’re lucky maybe they’ll enslave the remaining people and use them to make cheap clothing that China can buy and retag for export.
Ah, there’s the rub. I don’t think so. The Junta has tight control, like the mid-60’s Sov’s or Chinese. And it has ample guns and all the military and enough force to probably win even fi the whole populace rose against them. An uprising could be done, but it would need to be coordinated, prepared, and could take years. Maybe decades.
Yep.
Honestly, I would support the idea of an invasion and taking them out. But, it’s not going to be a cakewalk. It will take time, money, and a lot of deaths to move things along. Frankly, virtually no one really cares, and most of the people who do and might change things are dealing with other crises (Afganistan, Darfur in Sudan, Iran, occaisionally North Korea…). I was greatly amused when the anti-Iraq War mainstream press started issuing calls to arms on Burma, since none of them really understood what it would require.
And again, sadly, the average Burmese believing it will happen, and any day now, makes it all the more poignant. 
I honestly think the Burmese military could be removed overnight. To the extent the people could bring the government down is a function of how much they want it. I have no clue of the political situation. One person in front of tank is a hero, a million people marching on a city is a revolution.
And lest anyone forget, Friday is not only the opening day of the Beijing Olympics, but also the 20th anniversary of the first uprising in Burma, the one whose repercussions continue to be felt today. Local university students have already launched an “8.8.88” pamphlet campaign. See here.
The Olympics starting on Friday is a godsend to the Burmese junta. It takes a lot of the spotlight off of them.
We rolled over Iraq after many months carefully positioning our forces in nearby well-established staging areas. And as Iraq showed and many other examples show, ruthless dictatorial regimes who don’t have any restraints when it comes to the use of force can hang on as long as they like.
Hell - it took the Vietnamese to get rid of Pol Pot and he was killing millions.
A million person march would work - but that presupposes an unsupressed, un-murdered organisation and the ability to organise.
Here is The Irrawaddy commemmorating the August 1988 uprising.
And here is a new appeal for the 2000 prisoners still being held from that uprising.
And Aung San Suu Kyi’s detention has been extended for another year, as you can see here.
Sadly, the world has pretty much forgotten about the hurricane and its aftermath, as I always figured it would. But here is an excellent update. This may sound like a bad cliche, but it’s true: Whenever I read something like this, I realize how insignificant my own little problems are in the grand scheme of things.
Excerpt: “Nearly four months after the cyclone, the Irrawaddy Delta in Myanmar is a flat, dark expanse of ruin populated by dazed survivors, unburied bodies and visions of wandering, moaning ghosts.”
For what it’s worth, I never forget.
After reading some of the historic accounts it seems to me that the Burmese Army had a significant number of defectors who joined protest groups.
It wouldn’t take much to back a political uprising and that explains the extreme paranoia of the government.
I like your pluck and appreciate your sentiment, but after seeing how ruthless the Burmese army can be, I think it would take very much indeed for a successful uprising. For one thing, not all Burmese are Buddhists; many are Muslim, and they seem to have a better time of it than the Buddhists do. And with the most recent troubles last year, I’ve heard of the government bringing in all-Muslim squads to shoot the mainly Buddhist protesters, which they were pleased to do.
Real estate is a function of boots and ammunition. It’s easy to shoot protesters when they’re unarmed. quite a different story if an angry mob can shoot back. All it would take is a couple million AK-47’s and the ammo for a quick trip downtown. The Burmese army is a shadow of the Soviet Regime and they couldn’t hold on to their empire.