Going in
There has to be a time when the international community gathers the will and the guts to enter a hostile or isolated country and save lives, without consideration for the wishes of that country’s rulers.
While the case may be that those rulers do not have the resources to provide the proper aid to its people, it is their responsibility to either ask for help or allow help to come in. Failure to do so is akin to neglecting and abandoning its people.
The rulers should make this decision quickly, since every hour, more people die who might have been saved had decisions been made and bureaucratic barriers taken down. Sustained neglect and refusal to allow vital aid is a crime against humanity, just as genocide is. The only difference is, refusing vital aid is passive genocide…but still genocide.
Does the international community have such guts? Apparently not. Apparently, honoring the arbitrary wishes of paranoid rulers is more important than saving lives, because the latter has followed the former so far in Burma. But one needs to ask oneself: What would happen – worst case scenario – if we just said “Screw their paranoia. We’re going in”? How would that be worse than doing nothing, inviting more death?
Thursday, 15 May, 2008 at 15:37
Abso-bloody-lutely! When are our so-called FREE world countries going to actually stand up to the bully’s who despise their own, and continue to ‘vampirically’ suck their people dry? If there’s no oil, no resources they want, there’s no hope!