Before I say anything, let me warn you that while writing this, I am about to explode out of frustration and anger.
In my opinion, the responsibility of a government is to insure it’s people’s well being, and to work in the people’s best interests. But look at what is happening out there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHar0wJn4VA.
This military junta in Burma is doing, what I would consider high treasonous against it’s people. It is not caring one bit about their lives and well being, and simple letting them die, by preventing aid from coming in as fast as possible. I consider this indirect genocide, because by not allowing aid to come in, they are letting people die. So it makes no difference that they aren’t killing people themselves, because the result is the same, oh and they actually were killing their own people only months ago!!
This has been going on since the cyclone happened at the beginning of this month.
We already know this government does not serve the people, it serves it’s own greed and corruption. We saw this during the pro-democracy protests led by Buddhist monks some months back. And for over a decade now, they have gone against the wishes of the people and prevented Aung San Suu Kyi‘s party, National League for Democracy, to form a government, despite the fact that they were elected by the people to govern. And for several decades they have repressed the people.
The military junta’s mouth-piece media outlet, is saying that they won’t allow American, British and French warships loaded with aid supplies to bring that to the people who need it, because that assisted “comes with strings attached”, in the form of an American invasion to take control of their oil resources etc. etc.
Alright, ENOUGH!!! of this nonsense! If they’re afraid of an invasion, that’s exactly what we, the international community, should give them! UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has stated that he is “frustrated” (Source: UN Chief Criticizes Burma’s ‘Slow’ Response to Cyclone) with the military junta’s unwillingness to let aid come in. The UN is obviously useless in this case, thanks to a hopelessly old and crusty system of decision making, because Russia and China is obviously gonna veto any proposal of military action against the military junta, that the US, UK or France might come up with.
The article I linked to above mentions that the US already have four warships stationed outside of Burma, with aid supplies and a thousand US marines. It also means that ships from Great Britain and France are also there. Well, I think the right thing to do right now is to bring in armed warships, and escort that aid to the devastated areas. Bring in fighter jets if needed to make sure the aid gets to the people who need it. If the military junta attempts to fight such efforts, I think they should be overthrown militarily, and the people responsible for the violent repression of the peaceful demonstrations a few months back, and the people responsible for blocking aid from coming in (These are like the same bastards) should be put on trial for crimes against humanity.
And to those of you who might say “Ohh no, if you do that this will turn into another Afghanistan!”, well, let’s lay the scenario than the UN or NATO takes military action, and successfully removes the military junta from power, and take control of their armed forces (And NOT disbanding it, which is what really made Iraq go down the gutter), at this point, I think Burma is a very different beast to deal with than Afghanistan. One, in my opinion, very good argument is that it’s a largely Buddhist country, okay. Theravada Buddhism (Which is what you find in Burma) advocates dialog and non-violence, so I don’t think you would have influential spiritual leaders saying “My follows go fight those evil crusaders!” or whatever. On top of that, remember the big-ass protests against the repressive military regime? There’s clearly resentment towards the military junta, but like Poland during the cold war, it’s next to impossible to get rid of such a regime, through violent means, when you’re surrounded by a large military. In Burma’s case, any rebellion would be up against, I mentioned it earlier, a military with over 500,000 available troops (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myanmar_Military), or in the example of Poland, the Solidarity movement in Poland (Which persued non-violent means to fight the Soviet regime) was surrounded by 200,000 Red Army troops armed to the teeth … yeah, good luck fighting against that with violence.
Also, another contrast to Afghanistan is that if you got rid of the military junta, there already are people, who are qualified and EVEN freaking elected by the people to govern!! Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won 392 out of 492 seats during the 1990 parliamentary elections (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_League_for_Democracy), yet the military junta never allowed them to form a government. This is a huge-ass contrast to Afghanistan, for which the operation itself was extremely poorly done, and it was non-obvious what to do after that. Of course, military action against the military junta in Burma could be poorly done as well, but if we can wait weeks not doing anything, I think it’s relatively trivial to get some aid in by escorting the carrying vessels by warships or fighter planes, and then spending sometime to potentially plan a fullscale invasion.
I must say that I personally hate war and I will not engage to it, but sometimes it’s a matter of self-conscience and how much you are willing to see happening behind your blinded eyes before you take action. I admit that even though war is wrong, it is sometimes necessary againt incompetent and ignorant governments who torture their people both literally and unliterally (in this case denying their own people stuff to survive). But even though it would be easy to declare war and invade the country, it wouldn’t exactly improve the situation for the people. The country would first then be an endless scene of chaos and contra-rebellion, just like we see in Iraq these days. No, as of my socialist views, the best thing against an (ARMED!) junta would be to smuggle weapons into the country with the allowed aid and give them to the local people. The most legitimate government takeover would be one coming from the ‘bottom ground’ – i.e. the people of the country attacking their own corrupt government (in this case it is inevitable to do without weapons, unless a new Gandhi-movement is formed and the international society simultaneously boycotts products from Myanmar) and form a revolution to introduce democracy. I don’t know about the average wealth in Myanmar, but I’m sure there will be some people that are willing to fight for the better of the Burmesian people.