US aid leaves Burma undelivered

[CaptainChewbacca]

How long until there's rioting in the streets over there?

(CNN) -- U.S. Navy ships loaded with supplies for victims of Myanmar's cyclone will sail away from the country's coast on Thursday, after the ruling junta refused for three weeks to allow them to deliver aid.

Adm. Timothy Keating said the USS Essex group would leave the shores of Myanmar, also known as Burma, on Thursday, but that he would leave several heavy lift aircraft in Thailand to assist international relief efforts.
"We have made at least 15 attempts to convince the Burmese government to allow our ships, helicopters and landing craft to provide additional disaster relief for the people of Burma, but they have refused us each and every time," Keating said in a statement Wednesday.
Cyclone Nargis made landfall early last month, killing more than 77,000 people in the southeastern Asian country, according to a United Nations estimate.

Some 55,000 others are missing, the United Nations said, and as many as 500,000 to 600,000 people, mainly in the Irrawaddy Delta region, have had to be relocated.

The White House issued a statement Wednesday saying more than a million victims have yet to receive assistance. Watch a discussion of Myanmar's handling of the crisis »

"I am both saddened and frustrated to know that we have been in a position to help ease the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people and help mitigate further loss of life, but have been unable to do so because of the unrelenting position of the Burma military junta," Keating said.

Myanmar leaders did grant permission for U.S. planes to deliver aid, a total of 106 plane-loads of supplies worth more than $26 million. Transportation cost about $6.8 million, it said.

But the junta never gave permission for the United States to distribute the aid directly to the storm victims, prompting questions about whether some of the assistance went astray.

Last weekend, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon guided a conference of 52 donor nations in Myanmar, where countries pledged in excess of $100 million to help Myanmar recover -- and said they are willing to open up their wallets further once aid groups are granted access to the worst-affected areas.

The country's government had asked for $11 billion in assistance, saying that the relief phase of the disaster was already over and that it needed the money for reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts.

More than a month after the cyclone struck, more than 1 million people affected have received help, Elisabeth Byrs of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Tuesday. She added that aid has reached nearly half of the people in the Irrawaddy Delta.
However, she said, "There remains a serious lack of sufficient and sustained humanitarian assistance."

On Tuesday, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that the United States would continue to push to get emergency supplies to the country's victims.

"We are not going to abandon those ... people," McCormack said. Of the Navy ships leaving the area, he said, they "are needed elsewhere and there is no rational expectation at this point we will be effectively able to use those assets in an humanitarian relief operation."
"Our folks will do the forensics on that to see if there are any lessons learned," McCormack said. "We think that to the extent that there has been significant loss of life that we as well as others could have reduced that number had we been allowed to act more quickly with a large-scale intervention."

Seriously, can we just 'regime change' those fuckers? Or give the country to a responsible third-party like thailand to run for a while?

[wautd]

Seriously, can we just 'regime change' those fuckers?

If only they had WMD's.

No wait, if only someone accused them of having WMD's

[Sidewinder]

How long until there's rioting in the streets over there?

You're assuming the Burmese public will learn that their government refused to allow USN ships to deliver aid. A successful military dictatorship controls the media and enforces strict censorship, and as the Burmese junta is still in power, we can assume it controls the media. For all we know, the Burmese public were told the ships were part of an invasion fleet, and the junta heroically forced George W. Bush to back down and cancel his evil plan to do to Burma what he did to Iraq.

Seriously, can we just 'regime change' those fuckers? Or give the country to a responsible third-party like thailand to run for a while?

China is busy handling damage control for the areas hit by the recent quake, but you can bet they'll give "Support the government of an ally so it won't be used as a launch pad for military actions against China" higher priority if the Burmese government is overthrown without their okay. (See the Korean War.)

[Ender]

You know, between the World Bank, IMF, and G8, the world has a general frame work for how to deal with economically broken countries. It isn't perfect, but it is allowing for the "rise of the rest" and has aided in helping economies get to the point where extreme poverty is at a low. What we need is some kind of framework that lets us deal with politically broken countries. We can all agree that there are certain leaders in the world who are just shitbags that the species can do without, and regime change isn't a good way to deal with it, but there needs to be something that twists these fuckers arms so that they stop hurting their people for their own power.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The Burmese government has so many business deals with the rest of the region, that they could sit tight and pretend nothing happened.

And the region would like Burma to stay that way.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

You're assuming the Burmese public will learn that their government refused to allow USN ships to deliver aid. A successful military dictatorship controls the media and enforces strict censorship, and as the Burmese junta is still in power, we can assume it controls the media. For all we know, the Burmese public were told the ships were part of an invasion fleet, and the junta heroically forced George W. Bush to back down and cancel his evil plan to do to Burma what he did to Iraq.

Some articles say that some Burmese residents get BBC. The BBC does broadcast in the region, unless the junta has gotten around to deploy jammers in which case the whole region would probably know of it.

[Guardsman Bass]

Why do a full-out invasion? Couldn't the US just send in a limited force in certain publicized areas where Burmese could go to get aid? What would be the chance of getting any type of UN sanction from any type of UN committee for something like that?

[Pelranius]

Or maybe someone could mess with the junta's astrologers to tell them to simultaneously declare war on China, India and Thailand.

A few visits by Indian Flankers and Chinese H-6 bombers would leave Naypidaw in burning ruins.

[Eulogy]

The Burmese government has so many business deals with the rest of the region, that they could sit tight and pretend nothing happened.

And the region would like Burma to stay that way.

Well that's too motherfucking bad. These subhuman monsters need to be cleansed from the earth. Period.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The Burmese government has so many business deals with the rest of the region, that they could sit tight and pretend nothing happened.

And the region would like Burma to stay that way.

Well that's too motherfucking bad. These subhuman monsters need to be cleansed from the earth. Period.

You can be certain China would exercise its security council veto.