The case for invading Myanmar(Burma)

              The case for invading Myanmar
      By Shawn W Crispin

      BANGKOK - With United States warships and air force planes at the ready, 
and over 1 million of Myanmar's citizens left bedraggled, homeless and 
susceptible to water-borne diseases by Cyclone Nagris, the natural 
disaster presents an opportunity in crisis for the US.

 A unilateral - and potentially United Nations-approved - US military 
intervention in the name of humanitarianism could easily turn the tide 
against the impoverished country's unpopular military leaders, and 
simultaneously rehabilitate the legacy of lame-duck US President George W 
Bush's controversial pre-emptive military policies.

      Myanmar's ruling junta has responded woefully to the cyclone disaster, 
costing more human lives than would have been the case with the approval
of a swift international response. One week after the killer storm first
hit, Myanmar's junta has only now allowed desperately needed international 
emergency supplies to trickle in. It continues to resist US and UN 
disaster relief and food aid personnel from entering the country.
Officially, 60,000 people have died; the figure is probably closer to
100,000.

 The US is prepared to deliver US$3.25 million in initial assistance for 
survivors, which if allowed by the junta could be rapidly delivered to the 
worst-hit areas using US Air Force and naval vessels, including the US 
C-130 military aircraft now in neighboring Thailand, and the USS Kitty 
Hawk and USS Nimitz naval warships, currently on standby in nearby waters.

With the host government's approval, the US military led the multinational
emergency response to the 2004 tsunami, including in the politically
sensitive, majority Muslim areas of Aceh, Indonesia. The response to 
Myanmar's tragedy, in comparison, is being undermined by the play of 
international power politics, including most notably the military government's antagonistic relations with the US.

      Washington has long-held economic sanctions against the regime, which were 
recently enhanced through financial sanctions against individual junta 
members, their families and business associates. Despite the economic
suffering the sanctions have had on the grassroots population, many 
Myanmar citizens support the measures against their perceived abusive 
government, according to one Myanmar researcher. Early last year, the US 
tried to have Myanmar's abysmal rights record put onto the UN Security
Council's agenda, but the motion was later vetoed by Myanmar allies China
and Russia.

 In the wake of the cyclone, the criminality of the junta's callous 
policies has taken on new human proportions in full view of the global 
community. Without a perceived strong UN-led response to the natural
disaster, hard new questions will fast arise about the UN's own relevance 
and ability to manage global calamities.

      This week, French Foreign Minister Bernard Koucher suggested that the UN 
invoke its so-called "responsibility to protect" civilians as legitimate
grounds to force aid delivery, regardless of the military government's
objections. On Friday, a UN spokesman called the junta's refusal to issue 
visas to aid workers "unprecedented" in the history of humanitarian work.

Because of the UN's own limited powers of projection, such a response
would require US military management and assets. US officials appear to be 
building at least a rhetorical case for a humanitarian intervention. While 
offering relief and aid with one hand, top US officials have with the 
other publicly slapped at the Myanmar government's lame response to the 
  disaster.

      Shari Villarosa, head of the US Embassy in Yangon, has challenged the 
veracity of the government's official death count, telling reporters that 
storm-related casualties could eventually exceed 100,000 at a time the 
junta claimed 22,500 had perished. The junta has since revised up its 
official death toll figure to around 60,000.

      US First Lady Laura Bush, who last year publicly goaded Myanmar's 
  population to rise up against the military junta during the "Saffron" 
revolution, has in the wake of the cyclone revived her criticisms,
referring to the government as "inept" and claiming that despite it 
receiving forewarning it failed to alert its citizens of the impending 
cyclone.

 "It should be a simple matter," said US Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice, referring to the junta's refusal to allow foreign aid workers into 
the country. "It's not a matter of politics. It's a matter of a 
  humanitarian crisis."

 Armed and ready 
Should the junta continue to resist foreign assistance while social and 
  public health conditions deteriorate in clear view of global news 
audiences, the moral case for a UN-approved, US-led humanitarian 
intervention will grow. Fistfights have already reportedly broken out over 
food supplies in Yangon, raising the risk that Myanmar troops could soon 
be called to put down unrest in the midst of a humanitarian crisis. Last 
September, Myanmar's army opened fire against and killed an unknown number 
of street demonstrators.

      Apart from putting significant US military assets on standby, there are no
indications yet that President George W Bush or the Pentagon is preparing 
a unilateral rescue operation. Yet policymakers in Washington are now no 
doubt weighing the potential pros and cons of a pre-emptive humanitarian 
mission in a geo-strategically pivotal and suddenly weakened country that 
Bush administration officials have recently and repeatedly referred to as 
an "outpost of tyranny".

      Within that policy matrix, the deteriorating situation presents a unique
opportunity for Bush to burnish his foreign policy legacy. Some note that 
a US military response to Myanmar's humanitarian crisis would follow in 
the footsteps of Bush's presidential father, George H W Bush, who after
declaring victory over the Soviet Union's communist threat, moved to 
demonstrate to the post-Cold War world that US military might would be a 
force for global good.

      That included his government's US military-led humanitarian aid mission in
civil war- and famine-struck Somalia in August 1992 that morphed later in 
the same year into a full-blown US Marine invasion of the capital 
Mogadishu, including the airport and main port, to protect the integrity 
of future aid deliveries from marauding militias. That military mission
was mostly abandoned by 1993 after fierce fighting between US troops and 
  Somali militias, while television images of a slain US soldier being
dragged through Mogadishu's streets took the idealistic edge off the 
supposedly humanitarian military exercise.

 This time, it is almost sure-fire that Myanmar's desperate population 
would warmly welcome a US-led humanitarian intervention, considering that 
its own government is now withholding emergency supplies. Like his father 
then, Bush is now clearly focused on his presidential legacy, which to 
date will be judged harshly due to his government's controversial 
pre-emptive military policies, waged until now exclusively in the name of 
fighting global terror.

      In an era when the US routinely launches pre-emptive military strikes, 
  including its 2003 invasion of Iraq, the 2003 Predator drone assassination
attack against an alleged al-Qaeda leader in Yemen, a similar drone attack
in 2006 in northwestern Pakistan, and last week's attack against a reputed 
  al-Qaeda ringleader in Somalia, it is not inconceivable that the US might 
yet intervene in military-run Myanmar, particularly if in the days ahead 
the social and political situation tilts towards anomie.

      Whether or not a US military intervention in the name of humanitarianism
would, as in Somalia, eventually morph into an armed attempt at regime
change and nation-building would likely depend on the population's and
Myanmar military's response to the first landing of US troops. Some 
political analysts speculate that Myanmar's woefully under-resourced and 
widely unpopular troops would defect en masse rather than confront US 
troops.

      While Myanmar ally China would likely oppose a US military intervention, 
Beijing has so far notably goaded the junta to work with rather than 
against international organizations like the UN, and more to the point, it 
lacks the power projection capabilities to militarily challenge the US in 
a foreign theater. Most notably, the US would have at its disposal a
globally respected and once democratically elected leader in Aung San Suu 
Kyi to lead a transitional government to full democracy.

      Many have speculated that Myanmar's notoriously paranoid junta abruptly 
moved the national capital 400 kilometers north from Yangon to its 
mountain-rung redoubt at Naypyidaw in November 2005 due to fears of a
possible pre-emptive US invasion, similar to the action against Iraq. Now, 
Cyclone Nagris and the government's woeful response to the disaster have 
suddenly made that once paranoid delusion into a strong pre-emptive 
possibility, one that Bush's lame-duck presidency desperately needs.

      Shawn W Crispin is Asia Times Online's Southeast Asia Editor.

Comment:

What  or how bad the actual situation is in Burma and  the effectiveness of the government in distributing aid is difficult to say .

What is clear is that western demands to control aid distribution,calls for sending money donations to rebel  monks, Ruddscall to "kick down doors" ,and kite flying on oportunities for militarly intervention to create regime change through chaos like this   article , have created a paranoid reaction of what they see as sovreignity protection from the military dictatorship. 

      Link;

http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/164021