Is it Time to Invade Burma?

[DeepModem Mom]

TIME: Is it Time to Invade Burma?
Saturday, May. 10, 2008
By ROMESH RATNESAR


Aerial view of a badly stricken village of Irrawaddy, Myanmar.
(Burma/Chine Nouvelle/SIPA)

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. UN food shipments have been seized. US 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 US military, let alone agreeing to the presence of US 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 US 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 US has facilitated the delivery of humanitarian aid without the host government's consent in places like Bosnia and Sudan....

***

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.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1739053,00.html?xid=site-cnn-partner

[Bluebear]

1. Is there oil there? If no, then we're not interested :(

[bluestateguy]

2. No. Fucking. Way.

I'm very sorry about what is happeing there, but it's their dictatorship, and their responsibility to either overthrow it, or force them to let the humanitarian aid in.

I've had enough with American meddling around the world. Humanitarian aid is fine, but we can't be putting American lives at risk to deliver sacks of rice.

[cherokeeprogressive]

8. 100% Agreed. n/t

[Freedom Train]

18. We could at least bomb the shit out of

that new capital the dictators have built for themselves in the jungle. It's a great target, no ordinary citizens at all, just the "ruling class". But I agree about no boots on the ground.

[Kajsa]

3. Time to airdrop relief aid to all of Burma.

If the military thugs don't like it-
--saving the people of Burma--

they can do something I can't put in print here.

:(

[Aloha Spirit]

4. Yes. the referendum is done, time to help those poor people.

[KeepItReal]

5. I'm for air-drops. Just keep the U.S. airlift planes away from SAM's and aerial threats.

How hard would it be to get a U.N. resolution to authorize air-drops?

Where's Condi?

[KSinTX]

6. A provocative proposal

Efforts in that vein are better served than fighting for oil in Iraq, but we simply don't have the forces to really do it because of it. Similar efforts haven't gone so well so perhaps the real answer is diplomacy through China. They are, after all, seeking to be seen as attempting to enter the global mainstream so this might just be a good opportunity to test it.

[angrycarpenter]

7. They have everything ready now

just sitting on the airfields waiting to destroy Iran. Just change the targets. I don't want war at all but there is more of a case for it here than in Iraq.

I think when this horror starts to stabilize the people will remember how their "benevolent" leaders "rushed" to their aid and will be all but ungovernable by them.

[realisticphish]

9. I don't think so

not only do we have enough commitments, but a large-scale military operation near china isn't really a good political move right now.

I agree with some above me; airdrop food, but that's it.

[wuushew]

10. It should be noted that Bush-Co enacted yet another round of sanctions immediately prior the storm

Even acknowledging the brutal paranoid nature of the Burmese regime, only Bush through "bad luck", incompetence or perhaps a distrust of the evil science of meteorology could screw up this situation so completely.

There is no way to prove it, but somehow our actions always have had the worst possible timing. Interesting that the escalating crisis in Lebanon will coincide with George's trip to the Middle East.

[malaise]

11. Well since they're responsible for nearly a million

Iraqi dead and 4M refugees, maybe they should invade Iraq. Oh wait - they're occupying that country already.

Sp.

[EFerrari]

12. China maybe, not Burma. n/t

[Bobbieo]

13. Invade Burna? With What????

[EFerrari]

14. I was being a s.a. but, China pretty much dictates to the junta

in Burma so invading Burma wouldn't be very effective since they don't call the shots.

[Posteritatis]

15. K&R, and no idea what I think about the suggestion (nt)

[riverdeep]

16. Well, apparently, the U.S. is the only nation with sufficient airpower.

Otherwise, it might be better to let, say, France, take the point on this one. They don't want aid workers there because they want to use the supplies as another method of oppression, as a way to get their public in line. By obstructing aid, it's no different than if they went through the countryside killing anything that moves.

But really, like the first reply said, they have nothing we want. We don't actually invade nations when they are brutally oppressing their own people, that's just our cover story. Besides, I'm sure Bush thinks it's in South America or something.

[Zynx]

17. That would be one I would primarily want the neighbors to be involved in.

Some wars are fine by me, like when Vietnam invaded Cambodia to kick Pol Pot out. This would be such a case.