So soon-to-be-gone President Bush has called the Burmese Regime Brutal – “Every civilised nation has a responsibility to stand up for people suffering under a brutal military regime like the one that has ruled Burma for too long.”
Now, did any of the journalists at the press call after this manage to fit into the White House, what with all the unmentioned elephants in the room? Guantanamo, Iraq, The death penalty for kids, and going further back the CIA involvement in supporting a who slew of unelected ‘brutal military regimes’ in Central America in the Reagan years.
Yes, as I mentioned the other day, I think the international community has to do something about Burma, but they also have to do something about Iraq!
The whole thing is such a mess – what do we do? You’ve got one prosectable war criminal (if Iraq ever makes it to the Hague, there’s no way Bush, Blair, Rumsfeld et al are going to get away with the clear trail of breadcrumbs leading up to a load of made-up BS about WMDs) calling on China, who are now fast approaching their 60th year of illegal occupation and brutal repression in Tibet to condemn the Burmese.
I’m torn. On the one hand, I’m inspired by the passion of Jyoti’s blog on the lunacy of Bush condemning Burma, and am stunned at the hypocrisy of Bush’s statement. But I’m also deeply concerned about the real possibility that without quick intervention of some kind, the Burmese thing could escalate into a massacre, and that requires the US and the Chinese to apply some pressure.
I guess we end up like one of those cowboy films where the good and bad guys get together to fight the momentarily-even-worse guys before getting back on with their own squabbles once the matter in hand has been taken care of. So right now, everyone tries to stop the killing in Burma, and then we turn it round and make a big ole flap about the hypocrisy of the ongoing killing, occupation and human rights desecration going on in Iraq.
Damn, this world is a mess!
It’s awful, isn’t it? On the one hand, no-one wants to say anything that can remotely be seen as any form of support or toleration of the Burmese repression. On the other… well, we all know who’s been killing and torturing civilians the most lately, don’t we?
Another thing I forgot to put in that rant: contrast what Western governments are saying about the Burmese protesters to the insults heaped on their own anti-war protesters. Remember Blair saying that peace protesters had the ‘blood of Iraqis’ on their hands?
Only other governments’ dissidents are noble. The homegrown variant are merely troublemakers.