Saturday, May 10, 2008
My Response to Andy: Who Refused to Consider What?
In the previous post on Stephen King’s The Mist, Andy left this comment:
Completely unrelated (but since I am not blogging anymore):
Am I the only one who finds it odd (sickeningly so) that we would willingly invade a sovereign nation when most of the world was against the idea (I supported it), yet now this Administration refuses to even consider airdrops of basic supplies and foodstuffs to help a dying people because the junta that rules Burma says we can’t?
I quit blogging and suddenly there’s a whole bunch of stupid in the news. Ain’t it always the way?
I wrote a lenghty response intending to leave a comment--but the lengthiness got to the point where it just seemed a bit excessive. So, instead of a comment, it’s become a little post. Feel free to snipe away at my arguments.
From a recent article on the subject:
If the Myanmarese government does not relent, U.S. officials are discussing other options, including bypassing the government and sending helicopters directly to the worst-hit Irrawaddy Delta, where more than 1 million people may have lost their homes.
So, yeah, apparently they actually are considering direct aid and not just limited to haphazard airdrops.
I know that we already have one US ship in the area that isn’t being allowed to deliver its aid. We have approval for a single military plane to deliver food and medical supplies. US willingness to help is unquestioned, but the ability to give effective aid is being blocked by their government.
How useful would it be to just drop giant bundles of food and medicine? Without orderly distribution, is it likely to get to the people who need it or likely to be hoarded by those who get to it first regardless of need? How effective do you really think that will be? I’m not saying that we shouldn’t, but I am saying that much of the aid would be wasted and it would be far better if we could find an official avenue for aid distribution rather than dropping stuff out of the sky and hoping for the best.
If we force aid into the country, it will be a military operation with attendant risks. That the planning and negotiating isn’t done yet isn’t a surprise. Neither is it a surprise that some people want the government to act now without proper planning, consideration, or preparation. We aren’t talking about a full-on invasion, of course, but any time you send military vehicles into another nation’s airspace or plant your personnel on the ground without their government’s permission, you face political and military risks. Part of the consideration--which, for some reason, you don’t think has happened--is whether the results are worth the risks.
So far, the UN and much of the world is also against forcing aid--and with good reason. Aid money isn’t infinite and neither are the supplies that need to be sent; any way to maximize that aid instead of wasting it is just good sense.
Meanwhile, Kouchner’s proposal of forcing aid into the country gained little traction. Confrontation would not be helpful, UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs David Holmes said Thursday, a stance echoed by the European Commission, China, and other nations.
“I can understand the sentiment of France’s foreign minister, but I don’t think it’s the solution,” says James Schoff, associate director of Asia-Pacific studies at the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis in Cambridge, Mass.
“You could get to a point where [the UN] could just do drops from the air. But for the whole assessment process – I don’t see how you could do that without working with locals on the ground,” he continues.
Analysts are hard pressed to recall a natural disaster where the UN’s “responsibility to protect” – a phrase conceived in 2005 largely in response to atrocities in Rwanda and Darfur – has been invoked.
There is probably no other possibility for delivering aid to Burma right now, Mr. Schoff continues, other than slow diplomatic gains and persistence. In a few days, Burma might come around, he says.
My guess--and it is just as much a guess as your assumption that the Bush administration isn’t even “considering” airdrops--is that aid will be forced if accommodation can’t be reached in the next week or so. And if that decision comes, it could well be at the expense of international popular opinion again. Currently, naval vessels are heading to set up a base of operations to the area and planes and equipment have been moved to establish an operating base in Thailand--these are all moves that will give us the capacity to quickly deliver aid to the country whether we are officially allowed or not. Not exactly the stuff of a nation sitting back, unwilling to help people in their time of suffering.
In other words, these are I think that it is likely that not only has direct aid been considered, but plans are in the works to actually deliver that aid in the most effective possible manner if we can’t reach an agreement with their government.
I’m sorry, but I don’t share your sense of outrage.
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I agree with you, ZB. I nearly wrote a response on the other thread that Andy was setting up a false equivalency.
If you deliver aid without permission, you are violating borders without permission, and it is an act of war. Do you really want to commit an act of war for the purpose of aid? You can’t just send the aid “troops” in, either: you need to provide them military cover so they aren’t attacked by Myanmar’s defense troops. That’s an occupation. And even a minor occupation will be blown out of proportion into an accusation of “US is trying to expand its hegemony!!!” both internationally and by the liberal elite in the US, of course.
That may be what Myanmar is hoping for: if we end up going in without permission, then any problems (real or imagined) that happen from that point on are the fault of the US, not Myanmar. They could probably wring all sorts of increased money out of the US, especially with the PRC’s help.
I hate to punish people for what their government has done, but even an insane military junta can’t rule if even just 50% of the people risk their lives to refuse to be dominated. The ruling military dictators have gotten in bed with the Chi-Coms, and Now they need to suffer the consequences of that decision, and the people need to suffer the consequences of not doing more to overthrow the dictatorship. Moreover, Beijing has expressed a desire to win more international credit through humanitarian aid, and they need to suffer international condemnation for failing to deliver when a State in their sphere ran into trouble.
The older I get, the more I feel that we only make progress as individuals, as groups, as a nation, and as humans, when we allow people to experience the consequences of their decisions. When we shield people from natural consequences, things get worse for everybody. Government should only step in to provide more choices and chances, not fix problems.
I wouldn’t say I’m outraged (remember, I quit blogging, I’m all about calm and peace now). It’s more a sense of powerlessness to know that maybe 100,000 people are dead or dying and we’re sitting on the sidelines asking “Mother, may I?”
My comments were based on Defense Secretary Gates saying: “I can’t imagine us going in without the permission of the Myanmar government.”
So, that’s fine, let’s wait a few weeks or a month to try to butter up the regime so we can help whomever hasn’t died from the conditions in which they now live. As for whether just dropping supplies is the best method, no - of course it isn’t - but when time counts, we get to the argument of the perfect being the enemy of the good.
I doubt Jesus would ask for permission to help people (but then if they shot at him he could use his laser beams from his eyes to stop them).
Well said Nathan.
I also wonder at whose expense this aid will come? I’m not going to argue that relief supplies are entirely a zero-sum game (and maybe it is), but I’ll ask whether sending gobs of food, medicine, etc., means there’ll be less to send to Somalia, or wherever else it might have gone.
We might as well also ask why we aren’t using force to deliver relief to starving North Koreans. Or Haitians—hey, it’s close by, and we certainly have the capability of delivering several Army-run mess tents.
As for “most of the world” having been opposed to the invasion of Iraq, is that reflected in the number of nations which supplied troops? Not to hijack the topic, but maybe it depends on what “most” means.
I don’t subscribe to the notion that just because we’re overall a wealthy nation, we’re obligated to step in every time there’s a catastrophe someplace. Hell, I don’t even subscribe to the notion that the govt. should do so even within our own borders.
Another tragic thing about Burma is that it won’t be the military that starves. So the population will be left in an even worse position to revolt, should they have the will. And I suspect that collectively, they didn’t anyway, and this cyclone isn’t going to change that.
I’m not happy that we are allowing the thugs in Myanmar prevent us from helping their people. But I also can’t see that shooting our way in would be that great a solution at this time. We had enough trouble with the Islamic extremists in Indonesia when we attempted to aid them after the earthquake and tsunami there. Obviously tolerance for the existance of the thugs rule of Myanmar has gone on long enough.
This does once again show just how useless the UN is at anything that does not include calling Israel racist.
It’s only outrageous if you somehow see a difference between deaths caused by government policy v. natural disaster. This is an unfortunate intersection of the two.