That was the title of Time magazine article over the weekend… as if somehow this is feasible. The junta is universally condemned by the world’s press and esp. american press, and perhaps rightly so, for their failure to help their own people and their interference with international help effort.

But to invade another country? Even for humanitarian purpose, that is a serious issue, given the fact that it is obviously a permanent quagmire.

America seems to think that invasion is a process that takes a few months and then it’s done. “Mission Accomplished!” But in reality, esp. in the old world, just as saving someone means taking on permanent relationship, taking over a country means a long term committment that goes beyond feeding the starving and treating the sick – but setting up infrastructure, build new political system, and pumping resources that we no longer have.

McCain got it right when he said we’ll be in Iraq for 100 years. He understands how long it will take to set things right again when you break … them.

It also strikes me as arrogant that the US still thinks it can lead in humanitarian aid in the world considering its own abysmal failure in saving its own people after Katrina. Folks waited in water for days – just like the Burmese in the Irriwaddi delta – for aid that didn’t come and it was foreign aids that poured in – from Latin America, from Mexico, and even Cuba offered doctors. We should have “invaded” new orleans, and we didn’t.

Besides, ask the Hmong or the Vietnamese who were abandoned by the Americans after the war ended in Vietnam what it’s like to have been offered friendship and visions of democracy and then left behind to be hunted by their enemies. If we invade, will we get bored and bothered, and decide to betray in a few months and let the Junta go at it when we’re gone?

That said, a coalition of Asean countries – Thailand, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and so on – should put pressures on the Junta to open up. Thailand and China esp. hold enormous influences over Burma as they are main trading partners.

I think before invasion – a pipe dream – persuasion (rather than mere condemnation) is the key for realistic change in that country.

Andrew Lam’s videos

Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora

Myanmar’s Junta Gets a Pass from Neighbors

Side Bar:

Media Contacts: U.S.: Jan Dragin – 24/7, +011 781 925 1526, jdragin@gis.net
Lesley Crosson/Church World Service, +011 212 870-2676,
lcrosson@churchworldservice.org

NEWS UPDATE

Local Organizations Making the Difference, Delivering Food, Water, Shelter
in Myanmar

‘If communities don’t get rice seeds in the ground within month,
there may be no rice crops for years to come’

BANGKOK – Tues May 13, 2008– Ten days after cyclone Nargis devastated parts
of Myanmar (Burma), as tens of thousands of people still wait for
assistance, global humanitarian agency Church World Service (CWS) reports
that its support is reaching survivors in need. Meanwhile CWS continues to
expand its fundraising appeal to support relief in the country.

In the face of aid shipment and distribution challenges facing international
sources, CWS reports that local organizations are distributing food, water
and emergency shelter supplies throughout affected areas with commodities
either purchased elsewhere within Myanmar, or purchased regionally and
transported through channels that are still open into the country.

Myanmar maintains open land-trade routes with Thailand and India that allow
for importation of supplies, “So local markets still have commodities
available,” says Donna Derr, Director of Church World Service’s Emergency
Response Program.

“And local organizations have the advantage of knowing how best to obtain
and distribute those goods, to where they’re needed most,” she said.

CWS first provided humanitarian assistance in Burma in 1959 and has
long-term partnerships in the country. CWS holds an appropriate license from
the U.S. government to provide financial help to Myanmar for emergency aid
purposes. The agency’s Asia Pacific Regional Office in Bangkok is organizing
response among faith-based, non-governmental organizations that are members
of the Action by Churches Together International Alliance.

CWS, whose initial fundraising appeal issued the day following the disaster,
surpassed its goal in hours and has been expanded a third time to address
the scope of needs as they are being assessed.

Church World Service and ACT member agencies are warning against an
impending and longer term food security crisis: “If communities don’t get
rice seeds in the ground within the next month, there may not be rice crops
for years to come,” says Derr.

“It’s critical that we ensure that this major disaster doesn’t turn into an
ongoing catastrophe.”

Exacerbating the problem of getting rice for food and for planting quickly
into the hands of survivors, experts report that salt from the flood waters
have corrupted planting fields in the affected areas of Myanmar.

CWS and ACT member agencies in Bangkok said in communiqués today, “Now is
the time to support local organizations who are on the ground providing much
needed urgent assistance. The commitments made to survivors now will help
them ensure that they can rebuild their lives.”

Church World Service and its Asia-Pacific Region offices are particularly
suited to respond in this kind of crisis, given CWS’s 60-year history of
engaging local organizations to meet humanitarian needs. The agency’s
Indonesia offices were among the first responders to the 2004 tsunami and
continue to work through local groups in that country’s ongoing
rehabilitation.

In the U.S. in addition to public donations and other grants received by
Church World Service to date, CWS has received support from faith
organizations including the United Methodist Church/UMCOR, the Presbyterian
Church USA/Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, the Evangelical Lutheran Church
in America, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the United Church of
Christ, the Church of the Brethren, and Episcopal Relief & Development,
among others.

Church World Service provides relief and recovery, sustainable development,
and refugee resettlement and protection services worldwide and is funded
through public donations, grants and by the support of 35 U.S. Christian
denominations.

Contributions to Church World Service’s Cyclone Nargis response may be made
by: telephone, at (800) 297-1516; by mailing a check to Church World
Service, 28606 Phillips Street, P.O. Box 968, Elkhart, IN 46515; or through
secure online contribution at:
https://secure.churchworldservice.org/catalog/display.php?sid=1.

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The Junta Get a Pass from China

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