The Military Has Had It With The Nonsense

Certain liberal groups (Moveon.org in particular) seem to be of the mind that the Bush Administration has wrecked and politicized the military to such an extent there is little cause for hope.  

They couldn’t be further from the truth as Slate’s legal team ably illuminates:  

The Supreme Court, then, is hardly the only thing standing between the president and kangaroo convictions at Guantanamo. The truth is that the best thing the commissions have going for them right now are the lawyers and judges in uniform who have, albeit reluctantly, refused to play along. If they’d been out on the battlefield, they’d have killed any detainee they met as an enemy. But they’re not willing to see them killed in the wake of a sham trial. That’s not because they value the lives of terrorists over the lives of Americans or because they value legal formalism over the exigencies of war. It’s because they come out of a long military tradition of legal integrity and independence. And much as it must pain them, this precludes them from being yes men for the Bush administration at the expense of the rule of law.

Critics of the president’s military commissions worried that the bodies would do their work in secret, in the legal shadows, answering only to the president as their commander in chief. But the soldiers and lawyers who insist on holding the proceedings to a higher standard have, at crucial moments, operated in the open. They’ve navigated by the light of the Constitution, sometimes at an enormous cost to their careers. Their performance is the best thing the Guantanamo commissions have to offer.

How refreshing is that the military is succeeding in refuting the worst ideological stupidity of both the President (Kangaroo courts, torture, bombing Iran) and the Democratic Congress (precipitous withdraw from Iraq).  It may not be that good for civil-military relations, but considering our government is failing miserably at nearly every other level, its important.

Its Not Just Intervene Or Beg In Burma

Years from now, how will the world recall the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis?  How will the abandonment of between a quarter million to a million or more people to certain death by the world be viewed?

Of course, killing fields are all too common so this line of questioning is pointless.

Cambodia, Rwanda, Dar Fur, the Congo.  All have witnessed “the treatment”, international hand-wringing and the occasional hiccup of half-hearted measures to stem the dreadful tide of death.  History repeats itself, especially in this fashion, early and often.

Burma seems destined to join these ranks.  Credible reports of aid theft, continued obstruction and delay of accepting the necessary aid workers and whispered observations of ethnic minorities getting nothing intentionally (we call that ethnic cleansing in some places) mean nothing to the world at large.

 What then could be done?

Military intervention is highly unlikely and probably not advisable. 

Inaction is preferable to most but morally repugnant.

Begging the junta publicly and privately to accept aid is disgraceful.

Once again, the US finds itself in a position where it could influence events but cannot because it lacks the capacity in most instances to operate on multiple levels of policy and activity.  The crisis develops to America’s policymakers as an either/or fallacy, either intervention or nothing, or like Dar Fur, intervention or half-hearted measures.

There is more to the picture. The following are examples of other measures that could be explored, some in tandem, some obviously cancel the other out.

- The US could dangle the prospect of a lifting of sanctions against Burma in exchange for a firm agreement to allow aid and (perhaps) engage in a real dialogue with China, India, Thailand and ASEAN or the UN present with regime opponents. The sanctions have a symbolic effect but little else in a country where the above countries enjoy far greater influence and economic pull than we do.

- The US could muster the “democracies” as John McCain and Robert Kagan are fond of claiming can be “aligned” and push at the UN and through the global media for an ICC related indictment of the junta as war criminals (Crimes against humanity, to include ethnic cleansing).  Even if the Chinese and Russians veto it, push and push harder until the Olympic Games are set to begin.  Control the narrative of the global media by influencing events relentlessly that builds up pressure on more affected parties like India, Singapore and Thailand.  Failure is still likely but lessons learned from this may come in handy in future potential disasters like Bangladesh, North Korea, Laos, Cambodia, etc.

- Find an answer to the question of how influential are the Chinese in Burma? How many of the officers in the junta are in their pocket?  What it would take if the possibility existed for China to support a coup in Burma? How could the US push this forward? 

- Start arming the rebels in abundance. Such a tactic may be morally dubious at worst (though given the ruthless assault on ethnic minorities via rapine, aerial bombardment, murder of children, food weaponization and enslavement by the regime it isn’t that repugnant) but it will be China, Thailand & India’s mess to clean up after the failed state finally totters over.  Their choice to worship the false deity of “Burmese stability” that supporting the generals represents is tantamount to that of an accessory to mass murder.  

Is anything else available? Perhaps a long-term goal of opening the regime through trade (again, the lifting of useless sanctions) is the best option to be explored, though its also the most unlikely due to the idea of sanctions being a sanctified sacred cow in bipartisan American foreign policy.

Note none of these require an intervention by the US military.  Just as a variety of diplomatic possibilities were not explored before and during Dar Fur, failure to identify the RPF as preferential to Hutu Power (Or even jamming the Hutu Power radio signals) and how realpolitik trumped humanity (supporting the ghastly Khmer Rouge versus the Vietnamese), matters are regularly portrayed in Washington as “either-or” and actual understanding of the problem at hand (and the opportunities open to explore) suffers greatly as a result.

Above all else, the world today and in the near to mid future will likely be as hostile and unpromising to the application of American military power to address such tragedies. The need for potential alternatives besides doing nothing will only increase.  

This blogger is not egotistical enough to believe the ideas presented here are the best alternatives for Burma, yet considers the need for options beyond “just do something” or “do nothing” imperative to having a fighting chance at achieving some measure of our goals for Burma and respond to the enormous injustice regularly inflicted upon the many Burmese peoples in the future.

* Besides, stunned silence in the face of such depravity and craven shortsightedness from the generals and politicians in Asian and Western capitals is too much to bear without at least one more post about this.

Sources/Influential Posts:

“Is Armed Humanitarian Intervention The Answer In Burma?” @ New Yorker In DC
“Yes We Can” @ Coming Anarchy
Jim Hoagland, Washington Post: “Murder In The Name Of Sovereignty”