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Whether Cyclone Nargis eventually claims 32,000 or 320,000 Burmese may never be known. Either represents a disaster of unimaginable scope, all the worse because the country's military dictatorship has turned a natural disaster into a crime against humanity.
Emergency aid has been rejected, food has been seized, workers have been barred. The world has rushed to help, and Burma's leadership has kept all outsiders idling on the border while people perish to satisfy the junta's paranoia.
The precious 11 days since the storm struck have amounted to an atrocity of neglect. The agony has been compounded by the frustration of so many people so willing to do so much.
It took 10 days for the first American shipment of aid to be allowed in; U.S. Navy ships are offshore, waiting for permission to provide the kind of help that saved so many after the 2004 tidal wave; even now, the Burmese government won't let anyone else distribute food and supplies, though it has nowhere near enough helicopters, planes, boats or trucks.
As thousands of bodies rot in the Irrawaddy Delta, as dysentery takes hold, as perhaps a million people go hungry and thirsty, the junta over the weekend held an election in which it allowed the population to insist it stay in power. Nero's fiddle was nothing.
In mounting frustration, leaders across the planet have begun talking about simply air-dropping aid, or even staging a humanitarian invasion. If its own corrupt rulers won't save Burma's people, the rest of the world must.
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Myanmar tragedy
Folks, please think about what you are saying. Years down the road, we are still trying to get the Iraqis to appreciate the fact that we invaded their country "for their own good." Do you think that a country full of people so emasculated as to not be able to start a revolt to bring down their own corrupt rulers (I mean the people outside of Yangon and the Irrawaddy Delta, the ones who are not facing starvation right now and do not seem to be doing anything to help their fellow countrymen and women who are) is going to welcome us as the great savior, even if we get some other countries to help us go in? Who gets to define when interfering in a country's national sovereignty is the moral thing to do? Why are some of the same people who thought we should *not* do that for Iraq suggesting we do it for Myanmar?
Also, in an era where we say we don't believe in a universal Supreme Being, everyone has their own definition of morality. What about when the U.N. decides that something the U.S. has done within its own borders is immoral and invades us? Think about it--we can't dictate morality to others unless we are willing to have it dictated to us. With no acknowledgement of a un