I think the thing you have to understand about the surge of pundits wanting to invade Burma is that it's the very absurdity of the idea that makes it such an appealing op-ed thesis. It's self-righteousness without responsibility. Advocate an invasion of a country you don't know anything about and have it happen and, well, all kinds of things might go awry in a way that's embarasing. But since everyone knows there's not going to be an invasion of Burma, you can say there ought to be one and then make up a nice story about how well it hypothetically went. You can even show your thoughtful seriousness about matters of war and peace by chalking up the tragic failure to invade as yet another disastrous consequence of the war in Iraq.
« Place Matters | Main | O'Reilly Remix »
Cheap Talk
16 May 2008 05:17 pm
Comments (44)
Well said. And all too true. It will certainly be used to justify the industrial nations continuing to use their military dominance as an (offensive) policy tool, just like Rwanda. For years and years we are going to be told that we should bomb this country and that because we sat on our hands and watched Burma starve. Never mind that nobody will ever commit their budgets and armies merely for humanitarian reasons, as is so well illustrated by these very examples they treasure and keep repeating.
Just change "Burma" to "Darfur" and you can say the same thing. Nothing was going to happen on Darfur so talking about it was sort of pointless.
About a week ago I woke up to the front-page CNN Headline "Is it time to invade Myanmar?" What followed was the typical "some say yes, some say no" model, but what really struck me was the blase tone of the question. It was as if the headline was "Is Angelina having twins?"
I mean, has no one learned anything? Invading sovereign countries (for whatever reason, including helping its citizens) is, you know, a big deal. I can't believe how far we've come that invasion is presented as one of several equally weighted options, rather than as a true last resort -- but I guess I shouldn't be surprised anymore.
And the central theme of the pro-invasion argument was, "well, we should invade because the government isn't doing a good job helping the people through a disaster." I mean, are they kidding? Using this logic, Europe should have invaded Louisiana; obviously, they would have done a better job with post-Katrina disaster aid.
Didn't you say the same thing about the Surge, Matt?
Everyone seems to forget that the centerpiece of America's foreign policy is to use the 'military option' first.
It's sure worked well in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and possibly Iran! Or Lebanon! Or Venezuela! Or somewhere.
China doesn't feel like playing ball in fiscal policy regarding the Yuan? Let's invade 'em. Poligamists in Texas? Invade! Democrats in Mississippi don't agree with the Republican party? How about we railroad a Governor on phony charges, burgle some offices and burn down some homes? Let's Home Invade 'em? YAAA-hoo!
I could be wrong, but I believe this is how it works now.
Hey, maybe they are getting paid to push for the invasion of Burma. After all, one invasion under W's belt before he leaves office would be the crowning glory. Matt you should look into it (not that I think you would lower your ethics and agree), getting paid to blog for a particular outcome would certainly not be unprecedented.
Doesn't that make it past time to invade New Orleans?
No matter how stoopid our national discourse gets, it can obviously get much stoopider.
A few, a very tiny few people, managed to spend a bit of time gaming various scenarios of what a military-backed intervention and its advantages and possible consequences might be with regard to Darfur.
Not many, but a few.
But with Burma, that small sector of interventionists recommended military intervention instantly without even pretending that anyone had thought such a thing through.
Kind of impressive, given that you're dealing with a huge country with a pretty large population and a society nearly completely controlled (but not governed) by a central state, whose collapse might have incalculable effects.
Unless we bomb Burma, you are all appeasers.
"Never mind that nobody will ever commit their budgets and armies merely for humanitarian reasons,"
Somalia in '92(?) doesn't count?
If we don't invade Burma there will be genocide there. And after we invade, if we ever leave Burma there will be genocide there. I like to imagine the great achievements we will look back on in Burma in 100 years when we rid the world of typhoons and their appeasers.
There's a lot of piling on on this topic -- see, e.g., Tristero at Digby's place yesterday, whose outrage is usually better focused. Don't quite see what all the fuss is about. We intervened in Haiti and in Bosnia under Clinton for humanitarian reasons. It seemed pretty clear in retrospect that a tiny intervention in Rwanda would have made a huge difference. Why is just thinking about the possibility of intervening in Myanmar such a solecism? Nobody's being casual about it, but what is this thought control that disallows reflecting on all the possibilities for getting around the regime and preventing tens of thousands of needless deaths?
> Don't quite see what all the fuss is
> about. We intervened in Haiti and in Bosnia
Myanmar is essentially a resource extraction colony of the People's Republic of China. I am sure the children of the hard radical right Republicans will be heading to the recruiting stations in droves to open the first front in the War With China(tm).
Cranky
For what it's worth, we could probably make do with landing some of our huge transport hovercraft in the coastal areas, unloading 75 tons or so of aid off each one, and skedaddling.
They wouldn't need port facilities, and we could probably find landing zones in areas that are hard to reach because of road damage.
It's not "thought control"; it's a counter-argument against an unbelievably bad idea.
>>Nobody's being casual about it,
Sure they are. That's the point.
>>but what is this thought control that disallows reflecting on all the possibilities for getting around the regime and preventing tens of thousands of needless deaths?
I don't see many people who are advocating military action thinking through "all the possibilities." They aren't really thinking through anything other than "Burmese government bad. People are dying. Let's invade!"
>>Haiti and in Bosnia
And Somalia. And those were stunning successes! Maybe people should start worrying about their own countries instead of trying to fix the rest of the world's problems. It doesn't work and we aren't good at it. In fact, it usually turns into a colossal goatfuck. This nation-saving, nation-building wonderama that has overtaken American foreign policy must be stopped.
Anything which is simply unloaded and left will be confiscated by the government, for the government's profit, and do little to help those in need.
I don't favor invasion either, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the death toll go well over a million before this is over. Glad it is fodder for jokes for many here. Ha.
George H.W. Bush and the U.N. took us into Somalia in late '92 and saved huge number of lives (though at a cost Blackhawk soldiers among others).
Clinton and NATO bombed Serbia in 1998 again saving many lives (and this time with no U.S. casualties).
Meanwhile, neither we (nor anyone else) did anything militarily (beyond some pseudo "peacekeeping") in Darfur, the Congo, Rwanda, and North Korea and in each of those places, hundreds of thousands (and in some cases millions) of people died.
Which doesn't necessarily mean that we should have invaded those countries (there are tons of practical questions that have to be answered first in these situations). And I recognize that given the quagmire in Iraq, any U.S. military action short of defending the U.S. homeland is not politically feasible today. And I don't know enough about the specifics in Myanmar to know whether any country or collection of countries taking military action there makes sense.
But I strongly disagree that effective humanitarian military actions are impossible. And I think Matt's snarkiness toward those who raise the idea of military action is both historically blind and more than a little sad. The fact that there is a generation that now equates any military action with occupation is a tragedy for the world. And it's going to mean that millions or tens of millions folks die unnecessarily in the coming years.
jim is absolutely correct: We've been coddling these typhoons and cyclones and hurricanes and earthquakes and volcanoes and forest fires and insect-borne diseases, which have been terrorizing the human race for centuries.
We're the only superpower with the proven national will to go after these evildoing... things. So what if it costs The American People an additional few hundred billion per month?
Plus, there's totally reliable hard intelligence that bin Laden and Al-Zwahiri met secretly with the cyclone that hit Myanmar two weeks before it struck, in a safehouse outside Tehran...
'Burma' is what we say to our mothers when it's cold up here north of the 49th parallel, eh?
We intervened in Haiti and in Bosnia under Clinton for humanitarian reasons.
Haiti, population: 9.6 million
Bosnia, population: 3.9 million
Burma, population: 48.8 million
But, hey, remember its all about the humanitarian intervention and not the 51 million barrels of oil the junta is sitting on. Or the national gas reserves either.
Ouch.
The Burmese military government has been expecting our invasion for years.
They think we want their jade.
"But, hey, remember its all about the humanitarian intervention and not the 51 million barrels of oil the junta is sitting on. Or the national gas reserves either."
Not that we are going to intervene militarily in Myanmar (beyond the limited humanitarian assistance we are already providing), but just to nip a conspiracy theory in the bud, let's put the "51 million barrels of oil the junta is sitting on" in perspective. The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated the amount of recoverable oil in one subsection of ANWR (the 1002 area) to be 7.7 billion barrels (that's about the amount of oil we'll import from Saudi Arabia over the next 14 years, at our current rate). No invasion required, and the natives would love to have us. Who knows how much oil is waiting under our outer continental shelf? Since 85% of it is off-limits to exploration, we may never know.
Fred,
7.7 billion barrels of oil may sound like a lot, and you've sure found a metric to make it sound impressive, but it's less oil than we use in a year. Furthermore, it would take roughly 10 years to extract the oil, by which time our consumption will have increased, so it probably wouldn't even last that long.
The long and short of it is that we need to get off oil. Drilling up the world and polluting the planet doing so isn't going to solve this problem.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4542853/
Nate,
"Furthermore, it would take roughly 10 years to extract the oil"
That USGS assessment was made ten years ago, in 1998. If Congressional Dems (and some liberal Republicans, including McCain) hadn't blocked it, we'd have the oil today.
We (and the rest of the world) are going to still be using oil for the next several decades at least, since there's no alternative that's anywhere near as cost-effective in the meantime (even at today's high oil prices). We will become more fuel efficient, and will increase our use of alternative sources of energy, but we will still be using oil. Given that reality, there's no logical reason to use less of our own oil and more of foreign sources. Neither ANWR nor other domestic discoveries will be panaceas, but if we take advantage of them, they will decrease our reliance on foreign oil, reduce our energy prices, reduce our trade deficit, reduce our fiscal deficit (through the royalty payments they generate), and create hundreds of thousands of high-paying blue collar jobs.
As for your environmental concerns, ask yourself if you think our oil industry is able to produce oil more cleanly and responsibly than, say, Mexico's, or Venezuela's. Because we are importing oil from both of those countries right now (Mexico is our number 3 source of foreign oil). If we leave those 7.7 billion barrels in the ground (and leave the who-knows-how-may billion barrels of the OCS in the ground), we won't be replacing that demand with an equivalent amount of magic unicorn fuel; we'll be replacing it with more foreign oil, from less environmentally-responsible producers.
Personally, I am in favor of non-stop invasions. Of course, we will have to institute a draft. I recomend proritizing 30-40 year old males making more than $200,000 a year.
Also, we'll have to apy for it, so we'll put a 20%tax surgcarge on all incomes over $400,000. We will also put a 50% estate tax surcharge on estates over $5,000,000 and the capital gains tax will increase to 50%.
I know it sounds tough, and possibly economically counter-productive, but perpetual warfare is such a privilege that only compulsive whiners could complain....
"what is this thought control that disallows reflecting on all the possibilities for getting around the regime and preventing tens of thousands of needless deaths?"
And your plan is?
Thought so.
Thank you for demonstrating Matt's point.
Moron.
Just to re-emphasize Matt's point - because he's frequently as guilty of it as the next guy - the motivation here is to establish that you're "better" than the next primate because, in this instance, you're "more moral" than the next chimp.
That's it in a nutshell. There's no logic here, no hard rationale, no thought process at all. It's pure emotional reaction: "Hey, a chance to boost my status among the chimps! No bananas needed! How can I lose?"
As Sarah said, "Sometimes I understand why they dropped bombs on us."
I guess the problem is that there doesn't seem to be a clear middle ground between "let's go in guns blazing" in Iraq and "let's let them die" in Rwanda.
I mean, if Bush the Elder had somehow gotten the U.S. stuck in a quagmire in Iraq in 1991, in an alternate 1994 wouldn't we be saying that it would be a terrible idea to intervene in Rwanda? What makes Rwanda different from Darfur?
Fred wrote: "That USGS assessment was made ten years ago, in 1998. If Congressional Dems (and some liberal Republicans, including McCain) hadn't blocked it, we'd have the oil today."
And it would be rapidly dwindling to feed idiots with big cars bought to stroke their ego, rather than for necessity.
As long as gas guzzlers like the Hummer are on the market in consumer configurations (as opposed to ugly utilitarian configurations - your basic "U-Haul van AM-radio-and-manual-windows" configuration) it would be premature to tap ANWR.
That's a strategic resource, and should only be used in a true last resort situation. If consumers are still buying low-MPG vehicles in numbers greater than Lamborghini sales, we don't need the oil enough.
When I'm feeling crotchety, I prefer a higher standard. We should tap ANWR only when we'd consider getting into a nuclear confrontation over oil and would accept the sacrifice one or more of our cities if we got the oil. If we need oil that bad, it's time to tap the last large reserve.
"I mean, if Bush the Elder had somehow gotten the U.S. stuck in a quagmire in Iraq in 1991, in an alternate 1994 wouldn't we be saying that it would be a terrible idea to intervene in Rwanda? What makes Rwanda different from Darfur?
Posted by Quietus | May 17, 2008 12:26 AM"
The difference between Rwanda and Darfur are things like population, geographic size (and invading Darfur could easily lead to us having to fight in other parts of Sudan, which is rather large, and border areas in Chad as well) and the number of troops we would need. We don't have the troops and Darfur is simply a more complicated situation (with the issues of the civil war in the South ready to erupt again if things go bad) than Rwanda (which was a rather clear Hutu vs. Tutsi situation comparatively).
One infuriating thing about these calls for an immediate invasion of Burma is the willful ignorance of the practicalities of an invasion they display. It took 6 months to stage up two heavy divisions in Kuwait for the invasion of Iraq. Tanks, generally speaking, must travel by ship. We'd also need some nearby land bases, and I'm not sure how proponents of an invasion propose to get some.
Invading Burma next year is hardly going to help the victim's of this year's cyclone.
Airdropping a couple of thousand light infantry into Burma is something that might be accomplished on short notice, but taking on Burma's 350,000 troops with such a force is a battle plan that might have been drawn up by George Armstrong Custer.
It is fairly far-fetched to think of anything resembling a full-fledged invasion. What, are they going to take Yangon and further traumatize the people?
I could see a humanitarian airlift to the delta, but what if there is confrontation with whatever Myanmar has for an Air Force? Do you shoot down their planes? Do you shoot down their 5 operating helicopters (further hampering aid effort)?
Any type of operation could easily turn into a type of hostage situation, where local soldiers and thugs guarding the camps end up using refugees as human shields and hostages.
At the beggining of this disaster I felt there was a real chance for some opening up. But, many people, who should have known better, started throwing out criticisms, essentially kicking them when they were down. That's not the best way to win friends and influence people.
It is fairly far-fetched to think of anything resembling a full-fledged invasion. What, are they going to take Yangon and further traumatize the people?
I could see a humanitarian airlift to the delta, but what if there is confrontation with whatever Myanmar has for an Air Force? Do you shoot down their planes? Do you shoot down their 5 operating helicopters (further hampering aid effort)?
Any type of operation could easily turn into a type of hostage situation, where local soldiers and thugs guarding the camps end up using refugees as human shields and hostages.
At the beggining of this disaster I felt there was a real chance for some opening up. But, many people, who should have known better, started throwing out criticisms, essentially kicking them when they were down. That's not the best way to win friends and influence people.
It is fairly far-fetched to think of anything resembling a full-fledged invasion. What, are they going to take Yangon and further traumatize the people?
I could see a humanitarian airlift to the delta, but what if there is confrontation with whatever Myanmar has for an Air Force? Do you shoot down their planes? Do you shoot down their 5 operating helicopters (further hampering aid effort)?
Any type of operation could easily turn into a type of hostage situation, where local soldiers and thugs guarding the camps end up using refugees as human shields and hostages.
At the beggining of this disaster I felt there was a real chance for some opening up. But, many people, who should have known better, started throwing out criticisms, essentially kicking them when they were down. That's not the best way to win friends and influence people.
It is fairly far-fetched to think of anything resembling a full-fledged invasion. What, are they going to take Yangon and further traumatize the people?
I could see a humanitarian airlift to the delta, but what if there is confrontation with whatever Myanmar has for an Air Force? Do you shoot down their planes? Do you shoot down their 5 operating helicopters (further hampering aid effort)?
Any type of operation could easily turn into a type of hostage situation, where local soldiers and thugs guarding the camps end up using refugees as human shields and hostages.
At the beggining of this disaster I felt there was a real chance for some opening up. But, many people, who should have known better, started throwing out criticisms, essentially kicking them when they were down. That's not the best way to win friends and influence people.
The feeling I get listening to people talk about this is eerily similar to the feeling I got listening to my commanders talk about invading Iraq. That feeling is best expressed by the question, "Holy shit, can you people think of any worse ideas?"
I would like to make a list of the people who are arguing that we should invade Burma. The people on that list should be prevented, at just about any cost, from ever informing any U.S. foreign policy.
One of the foundations to the Iraq invasion is the fact that it was the brainchild of really dumb, 6th rate academics. It's the real world equivalent of that comic jargon-filled journal article that made the rounds a few years back. Except with actual death and destruction.
An invasion of Burma comes from the same stock of abstract, goofy/deadly ideas.
This could all be a plot to reinvigorate the Burmese essential oils industry for Big After Shave.
It's interesting because this is a political strategy also. Mccain uses it quite a bit...siding with things that will never pass or go anywhere but that give him a maverick image.
"I guess the problem is that there doesn't seem to be a clear middle ground between "let's go in guns blazing" in Iraq and "let's let them die" in Rwanda."
Also, part of the problem in Rwanda is that we didn't even follow the middle road options. We could have tried to jam Radio Milles-Collines broadcasts that help coordinate some of the genocide, but we didn't even try. We could have let our embassy's support staff escape with the American State Department employees when they left the country after the president's plane exploded, but we didn't and most of those staff members died.
Well, what I meant was what was the difference, morally speaking, about the situation bewteen Rwanda and Darfur? Doesn't the international community have both the right and obligation to protect if genocide is going on? And the Hutu/Tutsi thing is just as complicated as well: the Tutsi had armed fighters as well, and the Hutus' genocide was in part motivated by years of oppression by the Tutsi.
Comments closed May 30, 2008.
| 
Heads in the Sand
Just the kind of empty-headed blather I’ve come to expect from Matt, who refuses to endorse my call for an invasion of Sylvania.
Rufus T. Firefly
Posted by Bob | May 16, 2008 5:31 PM