Myanmar Relief Efforts

2008-05-18

We have all seen pictures of the tragedy in Myanmar after the last cyclone. The people there have no food, clean water, medicine, or shelter. Relief has come from countries around the world but the ruling junta of Myanmar won't let the relief workers into the country. Sorry, but that is easily solved.

We have the ability to air drop in relief supplies in extraordinarily large quantities. We've done so in many other countries, and with a greater threat of retaliation. It is an easy thing to do; you load up the cargo planes, fly over, and drop the supplies. The parachutes on the supplies open as the cargo leaves the plane and then the delivery floats gently to the ground.

There is the possibility that the military government would attempt to prevent such deliveries. They could try to fire up their air defense systems or launch aircraft from their air force. We just have to make it clear that, though we are not seeking to engage militarily, we will defend ourselves. After General Than Shwe sees a couple of air defense batteries blasted or a few air craft destroyed mid-flight, he will probably get the idea.

It isn't like other countries can complain that we are being the bad guys. Currently several countries, including France, are calling for charges of "Crimes Against Humanity" against the junta just for the response to the cyclone. Add to that the fact that Myanmar is the world's second largest producer of opium and that they are notorious in their support of human trafficking (slavery, forced prostitution, and such) it would be difficult to find a country that would want to support Myanmar openly. As an aside, I wonder who it is they are working in all this opium trafficking, you know, with that being a major source of income for al Qaeda and all.

When I've discussed this with some people, they have brought up the dread shadow of Vietnam. The United States has been to Southeast Asia before and it left a bitter taste. Well, this is nothing like the Vietnam situation. Vietnam was a problem initiated by France and the U.S. only got into it when it became a communist issue. Our military leaders of the time were way nutty about communism and would have killed their own mothers to stop the spread of the reds.

Some have suggested that we aren't more aggressive because the people in Myanmar are "brown". Honestly, I have no counter argument for that. It is a possibility.

Another suggestion is that Myanmar has no oil. That's not exactly true; they do have some petroleum though it isn't as much as one finds in the OPEC lands. Of course, it may just be undeveloped.

There is also the suggestion that we don't want to waste our resources in a country that obviously has nothing to do with Armageddon. There are a large number of Americans who are heavy into the concept of "End of Days" when they expect Jesus to come back. Places like Israel and Palestine are in the Bible and therefore are important to Jesus. Other countries, such as Myanmar, are full of unbelievers who don't count. Why should we even think of wasting our efforts there when we can be keeping Muslims out of the Holy Land?

The only proper, humanitarian thing to do is to air drop our relief supplies into Myanmar. Of course, I don't mind if we also drop communications equipment, CIA advisors, armaments, and so forth. It is simply part of relieving the suffering of the people of Myanmar, and fighting the trafficking in humans and illicit drugs.

Please note that I have verified some of my fact with CIA World Factbook.