Why Myanmar Matters
We could do ourselves a big favor by thinking about how other countries see us once in a while. In Iraq, we’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars and have committed over a hundred thousand troops for five years running to further our regime change strategy. It’s not clear how much good we’ve done. Iraq is still only nominally democratic and we’ve had numerous reports of government officials engaging in ethnic cleansing. The future there is murky at best.
In Myanmar, pro-democracy forces have been risking life and limb to peacefully end the tyrannical rule of their countries’ military leaders. These dissidents already have a democratically elected leader ready to lead a new government. And what has the US done to promote democracy in Myanmar? President Bush mentioned economic sanctions in a speech the other day. Economic sanctions? When have those ever worked? Where is the political and diplomatic pressure? Why aren’t we pushing our allies in the region to do more? It’s clear to any outside observer that our country is highly selective when it comes to supporting democracy in other countries.
Our leaders are like schoolyard bullies, constantly threatening smaller, weaker opponents. Then they try to convince us that we need big brother around to protect us. The Soviet Union was ten times more dangerous than North Korea, Iran or Syria ever will be. Instead of fear mongering, our president should be focused on protecting all of the struggling new democracies springing up in Asia, Eastern Europe, Central America and Africa. Of course that would require him to look beyond partisan politics for a change. Karl Rove would never stand for it.
Myanmar, Burma, democracy, economic sanctions, Bush, Rove, Iraq
September 28th, 2007 at 4:25 am
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