RANGOON, Burma — Rainwater was the only source of clean drinking water for some of Burma's cyclone victims Tuesday as the U.N. said only a tiny portion of international aid was reaching the region.
The country's military regime, which has renamed the country Myanmar, has been accused of hoarding high-quality foreign aid for itself while people make do with rotten food.
Burma has a small air force, with modern-enough jet fighters. And while their pilots can’t possibly be any good by the standards of a real air force, and most of their jets are outdated, I’m sure they could shoot down some unarmed transports with great ease.
So, either transports get shot down or it’s a real shootin’ war in the skies - we can’t just send in transports alone, if they’re serious, and I see no reason to think that SLORC isn’t.
And the third assumption is that invasion doesn't mean killing people. That all "we" have to do is show up and the Burmese generals, who care nothing for human life, will suddenly give way before the 'moral authority' of the invaders, just because it's a good cause. Never mind that the history of war shows that invasion almost always implies an exceedingly violent series of acts. Nope. When "we" show up the Burmese are just going to roll over, get up and fetch.
Now in all probability if the "good old U.S. military" actually does invade Burma it will incinerate every vestige of armed opposition in its path. Burmese Army units will stand about as much chance as ants before a kid's homemade flamethrower. And then all of a sudden the assumptions will collapse in reverse order. People are going to say, 'we didn't realize invasions meant killing people'; 'we didn't realize we wouldn't have allies'; and finally 'we did not think it would be so expensive'. And then we will hear that classic line: "I was for it before I was against it."
It's the same reason we don't go into Darfur and stop the genocide happening there: Because if US troops were to actually SHOOT SOMEBODY while stopping a sadistic, power-hungry governmental thug bent on rape and murder, the idiot Leftists would be howling and shrieking about "Imperialism", "war-mongering", and every other epithet hurled at the military during the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It's a no-win situation.
