Even though I do not know if it should be done, given that it would be done by the people who would do it rather than by people who would do it well, I’m glad someone has at least said this:
Invade the country, shoot the generals and feed the people.
Those are apparently the words of David Davis, opposition spokesman for something or other. His colleagues were “stunned”, says Iain Dale.
Incidentally, Biased BBC, who I do not always like (basically because I do not always dislike the BBC), made a good point recently about those Burmese generals. After quoting a Wikipedia entry to the effect that the Burmese generals are quite a bit more socialist than not, Niall Kilmartin says:
This socialist origin and orientation of military rule in Burma seems to have been airbrushed out of routine BBC coverage. The mention of ‘generals’ and ‘military’ with no hint of their ideology has an obvious tendency to suggest a right-wing regime rather than the left-wing regime it more appears to be.
Well, whatever. What is definitely true is that if, during a natural disaster, a government treats its own people as hostages rather than anyone they are supposed to help, then helping those people means shoving the government aside, at least for the duration of the disaster. Trouble is, smashing up a government does not, to put it mildly, necessarily mean helping its people. It’s one of those necessary-but-insufficient situations. I actually think that if these generals did fear an old-fashioned invasion, a bit more than they do now, they might tolerate an NGO invasion instead. Surely, a threatened invasion, a real one, might accomplish something here. Trouble is, if you threaten something, it is better to mean it.
Latest from the BBC on Burma here. Things are said, by some, to be “improving”. Hmm.
Probably the best solution would be to make them members of the European Union, then just order them to feed the people. It’s not as if we’d have to ask the Burmese whether they want to be in it. It never asks anybody else.
Or, we could just let the Socialism they have run it’s natural course, as it seems to have reached the late stages, and let the people shoot the Generals themselves. At that point, they are free to try another doomed Socialist government, or to free themselves.
Since the Socialism of the EU seems to be at a very early stage (there is little starvation there, for example), overthrowing the Generals from outside and imposing a younger one could just delay freedom.
Of course, we don’t know what will happen if we don’t intervene, and we don’t know what will happen if we do. I, for one, if I have to accept a pig in a poke, will always prefer the free one.
Any time you want to invade a country and shoot a dictator it’s a good thing. Socialist, Facist, Plain old Nut Job, whatever.
In the case of Burma/Myramar/whatever it’s practically a moral imperative.
At least it would get the army out of the country! Might even end up with Bwitayn having an Empire again! We could teach the natives how to speak pwopah!
David Davis is an honest man, but far too smart to say something like that on the record.
The reason Myanmar has survived unmolested for so long – despite being a huge source of opium, which would normally have brought the moralistic wrath of the United States down on it years ago, regardless of the suffering of the people – is it is strategically supported by its powerful neighbours, India and China, and politically preserved by the unwillingness of any ASEAN nation to allow criticism of the internal affairs of member countries.
Compare and contrast Zimbabwe.
Generally, yes. The problem is whether the invasion and all that shooting creates an even bigger problem. This is at the core of the row that has split much of the libertarian movement over Iraq. Most will agree that the overthrow of Saddam was to be welcomed; the problem is the enormous cost to Western taxpayers – mostly US and British – in carrying this out and paying for the occupation.
But you are essentially correct. Nailing dictators is a good thing to do.
Personally, I’m more concerned with the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of innocent Iraqis who have died as a result of this stupid pre-emptive aggressive war driven by outrageous lies and all the other usual accoutrements of western imperialism.
Dictators only survive when the people they rule over tolerate them actively, or at least tacitly accept their rule by knuckling under. When any people have had enough, they will generally overthrow any dictator, no matter how strong this dictator is. Witness the overthrow of the Shah in Iran, despite almost 1 in 3 of the population being in his pay, the overthrow of the mighty British in North America, the impending collapse of Mugabe in Zimbabwe, the defeat and expulsion of the Romans by the Germanic peoples, the overthrow of the Soviet Union, the smashing of the Berlin Wall by people heavily armed with spoons, …. why go on?
What has never worked, without endless death, has been aggressive invasion by an outside power.
The best we can do for the people of Burma is to undermine their rulers’ ideology, principally by undermining what will almost certainly be a parasitic intellectual bodyguard surrounding the generals. Once you knock the intellectual bodyguard of any regime out of the way, any brutal regime, no matter how despotic, is finished.
Perhaps the best example of this is North America. Virtually the entire intelligentsia of America was against the British regime, even Englishman Thomas Paine, who didn’t even get there until his mid-thirties. Paine’s pamphlets destroyed British rule in the American Colonies, not that statist fool Washington, and his appalling military cack-handedness. Thank goodness he was only up against another statist army led by equally imbecilic buffoons otherwise even more Americans would have died under his useless command. (Just look at the American military blunders in New York, if you want the perfect example of how not to conduct a campaign – Thank goodness the Howe brothers, the British opposition leaders, were either tacitly in support of the Americans by failing to bottle them up, or were too witless to manage this simplest of military pincer movements.)
The best Samizdata can do is not to go anywhere near supporting another aggressive destructive invasive war, which will go horribly wrong as always, but to continue the good fight of undermining socialist ideology. That is the weapon of victory. Not the automatic bullets in the barrel and magazine of an M16.
The contrast in the response to catastrophe between Burma and China is stunning. I’m no fan of the ChiComs but sometimes they get stuff right. The Burmese Junta on the other hand has made a complete arse of itself. With absolute power comes absolute responsibility which is why absolute power is always wrong. Because no-one can bear that responsibility.
Having praised China here I am well aware that the Poliburo may not of acted out of the kindness of their hearts. They were desperately in need of some good publicity after recent antics in Thibet.
And there we have it: It is imperative that the good guys never take the field because things might somehow get ‘worse.’ All will be better if the game is forfeited to the bad guy.
Not sure I agree. In the case of Iraq, the Kurds, Shiites, Marsh Arabs and other groups were shat upon from a great height by the moustachioed one, but of course he curried favour with the Sunnis. Hence he was able to hang onto power for a long time. That’s not a lot of comfort to the former set of groups.
Yes the socialist military revolution of 1962 (and all the horror it led to) is ignored by the B.B.C.
As for Rich Paul and “let the people shoot the Generals”.
You are ignorant – the people (both Burmans and, even more, other ethnic groups in Burma) have been fighting for decades – AND LOSING.
Contrary to David Hume all government does not depend on public opinion – if those in power are better military commanders than their foes (and/or have better military resources and organization) then the opinion of most people does not matter.
As the situation in Burma has even made the popular culture (for example in “Rambo IV” which although not shown in British Odeon cinemas, was wildly shown in the United States) I am astonished that Rich Paul is so ignorant of the nature of the situation.
Well I am not really astonished – Rothbardian doctrine has always trumped objective reality for some libertarians.
Lovely, Ian B. Other than Islam, the EU has been the most successful mind fuck around.
Saddam had to be removed-the sanctions were breaking down and he would ,no doubt, have reconstituted his nuclear program. Too bad the occupation was botched and in fact it does seem we in the West don’t know what we want to accomplish.Many Libertarians think that if they mind their own business, no one will mind theirs. It doesn’t work that way. Keeping ones head in the sand gets you kicked hard in the ass- if you are lucky.
Lee Harris-The Suicide of Reason, has much useful to say on the possible impending collapse of civilisation.
Invade the country – ignore the generals – feed the people would seem to be a better maxim. Demonstrate by example that there are better ways.
If the generals still have armies, they won’t be ignored.
Maybe demonstrating a ‘better way’ will convert some of the soldiers. It’s done wonders with the Kurds and most of the Shi’ites in Iraq. Some soldiers, though, will only see that their power and privilege will evaporate and will resist any attempt to unfuck the situation.
Wouldn’t be so bad, except the Burmese government has an effective monopoly on the use of force. It doesn’t matter what 90% of the population wants if the other 10% has all of the guns and such. “They’re going to find out what happens when people without guns stand up to people with guns.”
I actually tried to enlist a few years ago, after OIF kicked off. I was denied enlistment for medical reasons. If I thought there was any chance that the US would do the right thing with Burma, I’d go right back and lie through my teeth at the MEPS.
What I still can’t get over is the tranzi assclown who said that all relief efforts should go through the UN, because only the UN has credibility at humanitarian efforts. I suppose that, if I were whacked out of my skull on acid, that might be true. I cannot, however, see how burying supplies in Kofi Annan’s Caribbean bank account and running child prostitution is ‘credible.’
If we invade and shoot the generals then yes Burma will be without a government and they will experience some years of chaos after we finish aiding them.
If we do nothing, millions of them will die.
Well, it’s not quite as simple as that. The United States of America were assisted by the French, the Germanic tribes threw off the Roman mantle because the Roman Legions were rather preoccupied by a fellow called Attila the Hun, not to mention the invasion of the Suevi, Alans, etc. from the East.
The smashing of the Berlin Wall with spoons would not have happened if it weren’t for the military might of the United States and its allies, which finally persuaded Gorbachev and company to throw in the towel.
In summary, it takes force, both from inside and outside to bring down a ruling power that owes its position to the tyranny of its people. Either alone cannot accomplish it.
To some extent it’s lose/lose/lose (tactically). If you let the regime mistreat and ill-serve its citizens the result will be a mass tragedy (in this case hundreds of thousands dead, malnourished, homeless, etc.) On the other hand if you provide help directly then to some degree you prop up the regime and there’s a very real likelihood that you become an enabler of the ongoing crimes and depredations of the regime, which have a reasonable likelihood of being more severe, cumulatively over time, than the individual disaster you averted. On the gripping hand you could invade the country, topple the regime, and put a new regime in place. Unfortunately, in the short-term this hurts the locals more than the status quo (look at just post-WWII Japan or Germany or present day Iraq), is extremely expensive and difficult (same examples), additionally progress tends to be slow and irregular (same examples). Or, you can stand by and do nothing and appear to be callous and evil.
Unfortunately, this being the real world, there aren’t many options that don’t have significant down sides.
Sunfish, I would modify it as follows: invade, ignore, feed, and if shooting starts – shoot back. I don’t think that shooting is very likely to occur, especially now that China is somewhat preoccupied.
Oh, and, of course, get out as soon as the aid part of the mission is accomplished, to the extent that would have been expected if there was a more “normal” government in place, such as in Indonesia or China.
Alisa,
It’s not a shootout with China that worries me here. I don’t see themselves going toe to toe over defending the Burmese regime. It’s the regime itself that I’d sweat: we would have some difficulty coming up with enough troops to make them have the good sense not to try.
Remember 2001? The Taliban thought they could beat us then, too. It’s not the guy who thinks that we’re the 900-pound alpha pig and is bitter about knowing that he’d be overwhelmed that worries me. It’s the guy who thinks he has a chance who worries me.
Note to all Paulestinians who are going to take their bats and balls and go home this November: the subject of this thread illustrates reality: sometimes, all of your options suck badly. Refusing to take any of them because they all suck merely means that the selection will be made by someone else.
But he does not, or does he? Note, I am not suggesting an occupation (quite the contrary), only a quick invasion.
Oh, and it’s ‘Paleostinians’:-|
We have no vital interests to defend concerning Burma. Squandering resources on it would be treason.
Refusing to take any of them because they all suck merely means that the selection will be made by someone else.
The selection will likely be made by someone else anyway.
In context, it doesn’t matter. If he thinks he has a chance, he’ll step up and kill someone before he gets squashed like a bug. A big show at the beginning keeps him from thinking he has that chance. (Note: this logic does not apply to people who find martyrdom appealing, as you’ve probably noticed in your own corner of the world.)
Actually, I was thinking of the more-delusional followers of one particular US politician with a terrible lack of understanding of the rest of the world. Hence my particular misspelling.
I see.
Jack, is that all you’ve got? Times have moved on, you’ve got to up the ante if you want to remain on the cutting edge of paleo-libertarianism. How low is the anti-war right willing to sink. Pretty f**king low.
Yes Gabriel – even I was shocked by Pat B.s’ little essay.
I am used to him pretending that taxes on imports will save American manufacturing (a position that allows him to doge the real causes of relative industrial decline – such as the weight of the entitlement programs and the damage done by the unions and by “anti trust), but “the Polish government caused World War II by refusing talks over Danzig” was vile.
Pat B. has clearly been learning from the Rothbardians – they have always maintained that peace loving Nazi Germany was a victim of the Anglo-American “ruling class”.
Sadly people who know little history will agree with the great Pat.
For example, people who do not know that after Hitler was given the Sudetenland he invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia.
“A little learning is a dangerious thing” says Pat B. – and he proves it.
For this man has very little learning indeed.
“Hundreds of thousands, if not millions” of Iraqis who have died because of the war. Would these be the same “hundreds of thousands, if not millions” or Iraqis who “died because of sanctions”.
Because, of course, the same sources said that “400, 000 Iraqis” died because of sanctions (the altertative to the war) as claim that “400, 000 Iraqis died because of the war”.
They could not even think up a new number.
That’s nothing new. I first noticed him when he ran for President in 1992, and even then I couldn’t help but notice him peddling isolationism and protectionism as the cure for everything from wheat rust to engine knock.