The military leaders of Myanmar continue to stall efforts to deliver help to victims of last week's cyclone. But it's important to do what we can now to make sure aid organizations have the funding to get aid into the disaster zone as soon as political barriers are lifted:
Another 4 inches of rain was forecast to fall next week as more than 1 million people waited for food, clean water, shelter and medicine to reach them. Diplomats and aid groups warned number of dead could eventually exceed 100,000 because of illnesses and said thousands of children may have been orphaned.
Please give what you can to the American Red Cross or the aid organization of your choice.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has successfully shipped shelter kits, made up of tarps, ropes and hammers, and jerry cans for storing clean water to the Myanmar Red Cross, who is partnering with UNICEF to distribute to the hardest hit areas of the coastal delta region.The American Red Cross and International Federation will continue to tap into their pre-stocked emergency supplies - such as tarps, hygiene kits and insecticide-treated bed nets - located in warehouses in Kuala Lumpur and Dubai as requested.
After their crackdown on the Budhist monks and now their refusal of aid to hundreds of thousands of people who face certain death, I have no qualms with executing every last general and dictator in that government.
This is where we should be sending our military, not places like Iraq. The same goes for Darfur. Our priorities are all wrong.
There are evil people in this world who most certainly deserve to be on the business end of a guided missile.
Instead we are fighting permanent and useless wars for BS reasons. I would like to see us lower ranks in the army and create a new - and large - peace keeping force that does the work the UN doesn't have the courage to do. Basicly another branch of the military. I would combine the Marines with the Navy and reduce their forces. They are already under the same chain of command - I would simply more tightly integrate them.
That would leave us with a smaller army, a combined Navy/Marine Corp, and Air Force. Plus a new substantial peace keeping force, absorbing marines and soldiers who would be retrained for peace keeping and disaster response.
Peace keeping forces need to be trained differently because armies are designed to kill. Peace keepers are designed to keep order or respond to disaster - and killing is a last resort, not first resort.
If I were running the show, that's what I'd do. ;-)
I'd be really reluctant to threaten ass-kicking because about all we have left is air and naval power and those boys cause way more collateral damage than ground troops and the Burmese generals have moved their facilities into the civilian population since our Iraq invasion.
I feel other nations need to step up and take the lead to give us a break from being the world's combination policeman and disaster insurance payer.
To me, it's like when I'm hit up for donations by kids at store entrances supporting one worthy cause or another, and I have to walk by them because I give what I can afford to give to church and about 4 or 5 charities I chose carefully. I simply cannot afford to give to 90 or 100+ worthy causes, and I think WE as a country should use whatever political pull Dubya has left in the UN to get the UN to assemble a force to protect and demand its aid be permitted to be delivered directly to the people and not some military depots of the Burmese government.
As a member of the UN, this is our duty. If the UN fails to act with our encouragement and support, then there is no longer any reason for a UN. It failed Rwanda, how about Darfur and a whole bunch of tiny atrocities all over the globe?