The world is, rather understandably, disconcerted by the inaction of Burma’s military junta with regards to their response to the devastation caused by Cyclone Nargis. As many of you are aware, the regime has been hindering international aid efforts, causing the humanitarian crisis to worsen. As it stands now, some 78,000 to 100,000 people have been killed and a further 60,000 are thought to be missing.

While shocking to the layman, the Burmese regime has some cause for trepidation. We are, after all, talking about a military dictatorship that has imprisoned the country’s democratically elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, on and off since 1989. The very same regime was also responsible for using lethal force against non-violent protestors last year, among a variety of other transgressions during their tenure.

No matter how many people have to suffer in the wake of the disaster, the retention of control is, to the regime, of the utmost importance. While they might be megalomaniacal, they’re not so far gone as to not realize that organizations, such as USAID, have been used in similar situations to provide foreign powers with covert footholds. Thus, their number one fear is very probably the consequences of allowing foreign agencies and their employees access to not just those suffering, but the people themselves. In doing so, such a connection could lead to the infusion of anti-government sentiment that is backed by foreign interests. And while I hate to admit it, foreign aid agencies that are federally funded have been used repeatedly in the past to do just that.

The bottom line here is that politics, power, and agenda have no place when it comes to a disaster of this magnitude and such immense loss and endangerment of human life. Not when the number one threat to those trapped in the affected area is a lack of clean drinking water.

While brutal at the best of times, the Burmese junta is by no means completely daft. They are well aware of the dangers of allowing foreign aid agencies unrestricted access and movement. Because with them comes conditions, the sort that they are not willing to meet. And while, on the surface, such matters are viewed as simply exercises in good will on the part of major world powers, conditions are always present when their assistance is accepted.

Lost, as always, in the political haze, are the tens of thousands of people that are now facing the onset of disease and starvation. In the end, international politics will hammer the death nails into their coffins, not a lack of global, public compassion. Ultimately, through their inability to accept foreign assistance, the Burmese regime could very well find itself guilty of crimes against humanity. Their inaction could also very well lead to renewed efforts by members of the National League For Democracy and Burma’s Buddhist monks to challenge their authority. Given that that movement is steeped in the tenets of non-violent non-cooperation, perhaps, after some time, they will finally secure a free and independent Burma without the assistance of the likes of the CIA, MI6, and others who would use this terrible disaster to plant seeds of their own.

We are all human. When one of us suffers, we all suffer. When one of us is faced with disparity we must all take responsibility for allowing it to happen. Governments are simply ‘things’, they are not, nor have they ever been, the masters of human compassion or at all accurate moral compasses. What is transpiring right now in Burma in the wake of Cyclone Nargis is a human matter, and therefore governments, nor politics, have no business usurping such fundamental truths.

May 17, 2008 17 Comments

Updated*

May of this year was the deadliest for US forces in Iraq since November of 2004, a fact that the Pentagon conceded yesterday while trying to explain it away by sighting greater operational risks.

Things on the Iraqi side of the equation are, obviously, no better. In fact, they remain constant, with 169 Iraqi’s killed on Tuesday and a further 146 wounded. Yesterday saw, thankfully, a decrease, with 66 Iraqi’s killed and 97 wounded.

Equally as troubling, today’s Herald Sun in Australia ran a story about comments made by Tony Snow with regards to comparing Iraq to the long standing US presence in South Korea…

“The half-century US military presence in South Korea may be a model for a future in which US forces play a support role in Iraq rather than a frontline combat role, the White House said.

“The Korean model is one in which the United States provides a security presence, but you’ve had the development of a successful democracy in South Korea over a period of years, and therefore, the United States is there as a force of stability,” said spokesman Tony Snow today.

“You get to a point in the future where you want it to be a purely support model,” said Mr Snow, who sought to ease concerns among US allies, war critics in the United States, and Iraqis over prospects of permanent US bases in Iraq.”

I find that a very interesting statement, even though Snow claimed that the United States would adhere to, at any time, requests by either the Iraqi or South Korean governments to remove themselves from their respective countries. The truth is, the United States does have permanent military bases in South Korea, among them Camp Bonifas, Camp Casey, Camp Castle, Camp Hovey, Camp Humphreys (which South Korean citizens themselves have protested the expansion of), Camp Red Cloud, Camp Stanley, Camp Sears, Kunsan Air Base, and Osan Air Base. They even have their own golf course – Sungnam Golf Course (for a complete list of US instillations in South Korea, click here).

At present, the United States has over 75,000 troops in Asia, not including the Middle East and Central Asia. Of that number, and despite the fact that they are currently fighting two wars, there are over 20,000 US troops in South Korea, down from just under the 40,000 stationed there prior to the invasion of Iraq. Since 2004, the US military has transferred some of their personnel from South Korea to combat theatres elsewhere as the demands on the Armed Forces have increased.

As Mr. Snow eluded to, the United States would, at the request of the South Korean government, remove its forces. But the truth is that there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening any time soon. The US military provides far too convenient a deterrent, not to mention the fact that their presence in South Korea is not solely focused on the North Koreans but, to an extent, the Chinese as well. It should also be pointed out that the US maintains a considerable presence in Japan.

As for Iraq, Think Progress’ look at the US Embassy being built in the Green Zone in Baghdad is an eye opener for those of you unfamiliar with its size and accoutrements. It should be noted that while parts of Baghdad itself are in ruins and have little access to proper civic services, such as decent sewage and water, Think Progress points out…

“The complex “will include two office buildings, one of them designed for future use as a school, six apartment buildings, a gym, a pool, a food court and its own power generation and water-treatment plants.”

The U.S. embassy is likely to create even greater Iraqi resentment toward the U.S. occupation. While Americans will be living in posh quarters, the citizens of Baghdad are forced to survive with just 5.6 hours of electricity a day. Baghdad was also recently rated the world’s worst city in which to live.”

Who says hegemony doesn’t have its perks?

Now watch this drive.

*June 1st, 2007: US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, has also commented about US permanence in the Iraq along the lines of the US garrisoning of the South Korean border.

May 31, 2007 11 Comments

Last night I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Laying in bed at two in the morning I turned on the television and came across Michelle Malkin filling in on the O’Reilly Factor. Now, usually I wouldn’t write an entry about O’Reilly, but at the point when I tuned in she was showing footage of an old interview that O’Reilly did with with Whoopie Goldberg about an anti-war protest that she had attended in Washingtion along with Susan Sarandon, Jane Fonda, and Tim Robbins, among others.

The interview itself was rather benign, until, that is, O’Reilly started to take issue with Jane Fonda and her belief that a withdrawal from Iraq was warranted. During his diatribe O’Reilly referenced the genocide in Cambodia at the hands of the Khmer Rouge and claimed that Fonda had mentioned that what took place in Cambodia was, ultimately, due to US military involvement in South East Asia, an assertion that was actually correct. Between 1969 and 1972, 600,000 civilians were killed in Cambodia by American carpet bombing, which also produced millions of refugees, many of whom were then forced to combat disease and starvation, and endure a rapidly declining economy. Cambodians, rightly so, blamed the US and their support for the regime of Lon Nol for the devistating effects to their coutry, which in no small way contributed to the rise of the Khmer Rouge who toppled the government of Lon Nol in 1975.

Pol Pot’s reign of terror that followed devisted Cambodia further, producing one of the most significant genocides of the latter half of the twentieth century. It was not until the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in November of 1978 to stop Khmer Rouge incursions into Vietnam and to protect Vietnamese living inside the Cambodian border that the Cambodian holocaust was slowed, ultimately ending when Vietnamese forces ousted the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979.

Bill O’Reilly routinely claims that his information is backed by fact, an assertion that has always perplexed me. Even more, that his knowledge is so limited on the subject that he didn’t even bother to have anyone research the fact that after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, Washington made efforts to preserve the Khmer Rouge as a counter to the Vietnamese. They strong armed international aid agencies to provide humanitarian assistance to the Khmer Rouge after it fled into Thailand, where they provided it military assistance. Even as recently as 1982, the US forced three major anti-Vietnamese factions, one of them being the Khmer Rouge (still led by Pol Pot) into a single group. Because of that, the Khmer Rouge still has a presence in Cambodia to this day.

April 14, 2007 18 Comments

It pales in comparison to the figures allotted US domestic propaganda, of course, but $76,000 dollars in 2006 is still a considerable amount of money given that Canada has but 2,600 soldiers in Afghanistan. As the Toronto Star’s Allan Woods pointed out in today’s issue, Mr. Harper has made attempts to link Canada’s military participation in the war in Afghanistan with the 24 Canadians killed on September 11th, with Mr. O’Connor going so far as to call our contribution to NATO efforts ‘retribution’ for those 24 deaths. Leave it to an ex-arms lobbyist turned Defense Minister not to realize that we’ve lost 45 people over there, almost double the number who were lost in the collapse of the World Trade Center, to make such an idiotic statement.

With the Pakistani ISI allegedly aiding the Taliban in Baluchistan Province, and al-Qaeda’s command infrastructure re-located to the Pashtun tribal belt along Afghanistan’s frontier with Pakistan (where it’s attracting everything from disgruntled local tribesmen to foreign radicals), it should come as no surprise to anyone that what is occurring in Afghanistan is anything but a small conflict between a handful of fringe radicals and NATO’s military leftovers, eager to placate the administration in Washington.

By way of Ali Mohammed Jan Aurakzai, the governor of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, and The Associated Press…

“Taliban-led insurgents are winning ever-greater public support in Afghanistan for a struggle that is taking on the character of a “liberation war” against foreign troops, a senior Pakistani official claimed Friday.

The remark by the governor of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province could inflame further a war of words between Kabul and Islamabad about who is responsible for the resurgence of militant activity in Afghanistan.

It could also dismay U.S. and NATO commanders who say their beefed-up military operation is designed to pave the way for badly needed reconstruction aid.

Ali Mohammed Jan Aurakzai, whose province includes areas where many Taliban and al-Qaeda militants fled after a U.S.-led military coalition drove them from Afghanistan five years ago, said cross-border attacks accounted for only a fraction of the insurgency in Afghanistan.

The main reason for the Taliban’s return was the frustration of ethnic Pashtuns seeking more political say in Kabul and resentment of ongoing military operations and the lack of economic aid in the south and east of Afghanistan, he said.

“Today, they’ve reached the stage that a lot of the local population has started supporting the militant operations and it is developing into some sort of a nationalist movement, a resistance movement, sort of a liberation war against coalition forces,” Aurakzai told reporters at a news conference.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and some U.S. military officials have suggested that Pakistani security forces are secretly aiding militants crossing into Afghanistan to mount attacks.�?

Ironically, Afghanistan receives the least amount of US aid of all the countries that it has militarily interfered with since 2001, focusing most its resources on efforts in Iraq. In fact, in 2003, Colombia received more military training by US personnel than any other country.

In light of the complexities, and dare I say ‘realities’ of the conflict in Afghanistan, one which, despite 9/11, stretches back longer than anyone cares to remember (especially the British), the government of this country would have you believe that it is a far simpler situation. In fact, the head of this country’s military even remarked that the situation in Afghanistan was difficult because local fighters were blending in with the local populace. That mindset, in and of itself, should be sounding the loudest of alarm bells because that sort of one-dimensionality isn’t new when it comes to statements made by this country’s military leadership – statements that childishly accuse an enemy fighting a guerrilla resistance to come out in the open and fight like men. I mean, while they’re at it, why don’t they wear giant targets on their backs as well? Surely such vibrato isn’t necessary when dealing with largely uneducated peasants from the world’s poorest country.

It’s as if the French and American experiences in South East Asia taught us nothing. Even more to the point, that the success of the Afghan resistance in the 1980’s wasn’t enough to gift us some respect for the commitment and fortitude of those now faced. Call them what you will – evil, religious zealots, whatever – the reality is that they’re fanatically dedicated to their beliefs, and if one of those beliefs is driving foreign forces out of Afghanistan then that is something that should be seriously considered rather than arrogantly disregarded. A friend, who is an officer if the Canadian Armed Forces, and has served in Afghanistan, told me that the difference between Western troops and Afghans was that they were willing to die, en mass if need be, for their beliefs. Their commitment, which seemingly surpasses the fear of death, makes them far more powerful than anything that we might throw at them, and the rebuking of British Marines on the 5th of December speaks to that. During that encounter the Taliban endured repeated air strikes and artillery fire, including attacks by Apache attack helicopters and 500 lbs bombs dropped by American B-1 Bombers. And yet they were successful in keeping the Royal Marines from achieving their objectives.

I do not write these things to praise the Taliban, or any other faction fighting NATO forces in Afghanistan, though a healthy respect for one’s enemy is a fundamental principle of conflict. Rather, to illustrate that (yet again) Western arrogance, along with confused policy objectives, has created a mess that is not as one dimensional as Mr. Harper, Mr. O’Connor, Mr. Bush, or Mr. Blair would have you believe.

When this country pledged its support for the NATO mission in Afghanistan, something that still perplexes me given the mandate of the organization itself, one wonders what Canadians thought they were buying into? Obviously the shock and anger felt post 9/11 had a great deal to do with it, but it surprises me that the current government would even attempt to have Canadians believe that what is happening in Afghanistan is a conflict that is at all easily explained, or that there are simple, traditional lines to be drawn. When the United States initially invaded the country in 2001 (and our very own Joint Task Force 2 was operating under US command in a combat capacity unbeknownst to most Canadians), it reconstituted its tenuous relationship with the Northern Alliance, and yet we’re surprised to learn that opium production has skyrocketed since 2001. Even the abandonment of Afghanistan by the Americans in the months before the invasion of Iraq, which is by no means an understatement, lends weight to fears that Canada has become little more than an American proxy in Afghanistan.

So last year, the government (your government) spent $76,000 dollars of your money in an attempt to convince you that that isn’t the case.

February 17, 2007 Leave a Comment