"Skillful Humanitarian Workers Are Not Necessary"

The US government moves to show the ruling military junta of Myanmar that it is serious about providing aid to the cyclone victims:

Admiral Timothy J. Keating flew in a U.S. Air Force C-130 from an air base in Thailand that is turning into a staging area for Burma relief. Accompanying him was Henrietta H. Fore, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development. At the airport in Rangoon, Burma's largest city, they conferred with Burma's top naval officer in the highest-level military contact between the two countries in decades.

Keating and Fore did not go beyond the airport before flying back to Thailand. Fore said she believed that "our discussions were a good first step" toward broader U.S. help.

Hours later, a second U.S. flight left Thailand with relief supplies. Lt. Col. Douglas Powell said the Marine C-130 cargo plane left for Yangon Tuesday carrying 19,900 pounds of water, blankets and mosquito nets. He said a third flight carrying more supplies would leave later in the day.

The United States has troops in the area that could assist in the humanitarian mission, but, so far, they have been told not to help:

The United States has offered to deploy as many as 4,000 Marines, six C-130 planes and a large number of heavy-lift helicopters in what would be its largest disaster relief effort since the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. It will also have three naval ships, with helicopters on board, positioned off Burma's southwest coast within 48 hours.

"We have a broad array of personnel and equipment, and we are ready to respond as soon as the Burmese give us permission," Keating said.

The cargo plane on which Keating and Fore traveled delivered bottled water, blankets and mosquito nets. U.S. and Burmese military personnel jointly unloaded the supplies, which the Burmese promised to send quickly to the disaster zone by helicopter.

In another sign of gradual cooperation, U.N. officials said that the Burmese had now approved visas for 34 aid workers.

The U.S. government, meanwhile, moved Monday to allow individuals to send unlimited amounts of money to people in Burma.

Myanmar stopped short, again, of allowing meaningful assistance:

Myanmar told the United States on Monday that basic needs of the storm victims are being fulfilled and that "skillful humanitarian workers are not necessary."

UPDATE I / WS 8:40AM

Anne Applebaum has more on this story:

But in one very narrow sense, the cruel, power-hungry, violent and xenophobic generals who run Burma are not irrational at all: Given their most urgent goal -- to maintain power at all costs -- their reluctance to accept international aid in the wake of a devastating cyclone makes perfect sense. It's straightforward: The junta cares about its own survival, not the survival of its people. Thus the death toll is thought to have reached 100,000, a further 1.5 million Burmese are at risk of epidemics and starvation, parts of the country are still underwater, hundreds of thousands of people are camped in the open without food or clean water -- and, yes, if foreigners come to distribute aid, the legitimacy of the regime might be threatened.

Especially foreigners in large numbers, using high-tech vehicles that don't exist in Burma, distributing cartons of rice marked "Made in the USA" or even "UNDP," of course. All natural disasters -- from the Armenian earthquake that helped bring down the Soviet Union to Hurricane Katrina, which damaged the Bush administration -- have profound political implications, as do the aid efforts that follow them. The Burmese generals clearly know this.

Hence the "logic" of the regime's behavior in the days since the cyclone: the impounding of airplanes full of food; the initial refusal to grant visas to relief workers or landing rights to foreign aircraft; the initial refusal to allow American (or, indeed, any) military forces to supply the ships, planes and helicopters necessary for the mass distribution of food and supplies that Burma needs. Nor is this simply anti-Western paranoia: The foreign minister of Thailand has been kept out, too. Even Burmese citizens have been prevented from taking food to the flood-damaged regions, on the grounds that "all assistance must be channeled through the military." The result: Aid organizations that have workers on the ground are talking about the hundreds of thousands of homeless Burmese who may soon begin dying of cholera, diarrhea and other diseases. This isn't logic by our standards, but it is logic by the standards of Burma's leaders. Which is why we have to assume that the regime's fear of foreign relief workers could even increase as the crisis grows, threatening the regime further.

And So it Begins

When I put up this post, I figured it would draw fire. I deliberately chose to view this incident OUTSIDE of a Bush/Cheney/Neocon worldview and I wrote it as if Barack Obama/John Edwards/Hillary Clinton were President.

Why?

Because Bush/Cheney are not "forever." In about a year, we're going to have a foreign policy once again. We're going to be tested. We're going to have to think of a world where there is no Bush/Cheney to have a kneejerk reaction to.

Liberals/Progressives better wake the fuck up--we're going to be tested once the insane and criminal batch of current office holders leave office. Didn't any of you read McGovern's op-ed? Yes, they SHOULD be impeached. They likely won't be impeached.

But that doesn't change the fact that an American President is going to see our forces targeted, provoked and attacked in the future. There will be future attacks on US interests.

And if the prevailing worldview is to view things through the distortion of a Bush/Cheney worldview, we're in for a real treat. Because sometimes, sometimes, the use of American military power is justified. It is not "war mongering" and it is not "reckless" in any way, shape or form to protect the world's oil supply--

--we've been doing it in the Persian Gulf since Ronald Reagan was President, and that blue water Navy of ours gets more and more important by the day.

It's called China. And their blue water navy gets bigger every day.

So grow up, kids. Grow the fuck up. Some day soon, the grownups are going to be back in charge, and if we tie their hands, we're going to see a resurgence in the "neocon" worldview, whether we like it or not.




[A photo of the Strait of Hormuz from the Space Shuttle]



U.S. says Iranian gunboats harassed warships

By Jim Miklaszewski
NBC News

WASHINGTON - Iranian Revolutionary Guard gunboats harassed three U.S. Navy warships in the Strait of Hormuz Sunday, in what the U.S. military considers a "significant provocative act."

Military officials told NBC News that two U.S. Navy destroyers and one frigate were heading into the Persian Gulf through the international waters of the Strait of Hormuz when five armed "fast boats" of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard approached a high speed, darting in and out of the formation.

At one point a radio message from one of the Iranian boats warned, "You are going to blow up within minutes."

The Navy warships went into defensive mode, radioed the usual warnings to steer clear, and in the end no shots were fired. U.S. military warships believe the Revolutionary Guard boats were "testing our defenses," the officials said.

The United States expressed concern when the Revolutionary Guard forces took over Iranian naval operations in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz from the regular navy more than five months ago.

First of all, this is a joke, plain and simple. No "Iranian Fast Boat" should ever be allowed to approach a US Warship. I don't know what the rules of engagement were, but it's pretty simple--if a vessel approaches a US Navy vessel in open waters, and behaves in a threatening manner, then that vessel should be blown out of the water.

If you want to be taken seriously in the world, yes--you should prefer diplomacy. You should never start a war so that you can work out your "daddy issues" at the expense of 3,900+ dead Americans. But the use of military force to protect American lives is sometimes justified.

I'm not for warmongering. I'm for common sense. And the lives of the Americans on those warships are too goddamned valuable to allow some academic exercise in open waters. The example of what happened to the USS Cole is just too hard to forget. And, of course, the US Navy should have then picked up any survivors and dropped them off at the nearest port. I don't know how you survive being blown up in a fast boat, but I also don't doubt the professionalism of our Navy. It's not by accident that the Navy is running most of the military right now, and most of the "conscience" about things comes from highly trained and professional Navy officers right now. The other services have some issues they need to work on, and they would benefit from spending some time figuring out how the Navy instills the right traits in its leaders. Just sayin'.

The Iranians are not a threat per se to the existence of the United States. But when they do stupid shit, they deserve to be poked in the eye and told to back off. There is a struggle within Iran, and perhaps the lack of judgement on the part of some of their more radical elements--for example, whoever thought it would be a good idea to stage this particular stunt--should be demonstrated back to them. If person X thought it was a good idea, then person X in the Iranian leadership can sit back and explain why several sunken fast boats achieved their goals. It would make for an interesting meeting, I guess.

I commend the Navy for not removing a few Iranian fast boats from the Iranian Navy's inventory, but what is this really all about? What is really going on here?

UPDATE 1: From the Pentagon, as seen on Thinkprogress.org--

Pentagon says U.S. ships harassed by Iranians.

“In what is being called a serious provocation, Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats harassed and provoked three U.S. Navy ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz,” Pentagon officials said. According to one official, “Five small [Iranian] boats were acting in a very aggressive way… and causing our ships to take evasive maneuvers.” The AP reports:

“There were no injuries but there very well could have been,” he said, adding that the Iranian boats turned away “literally at the very moment that U.S. forces were preparing to open fire” in self defense.

He said he didn’t have the precise transcript of communications that passed between the two forces, but the Iranians radioed something to the effect that “we’re coming at you and you’ll explode in a couple minutes.”

Again--no question. Had the US Navy blown these craft out of the water, I would be the first to applaud their efforts at defending themselves. Someone in the Iranian regime is clearly agitating for a confrontation, one we should not to back down from.