It looks obvious

Isn’t he a little bit late?

President Bush told Neil Cavuto of Fox News on Friday, “Fiscal conservatism is one of my defining issues for the remaining months.”

I guess the next thing he will be saying, trying to save his awful legacy, is that he is against “nation building”….

I don’t envy the frustration of the relief workers trying to access Myanmar and help the survivors. The military regime in Myanmar was evil before the current disaster and it demonstrate, again, its horrible nature after the cyclone hit. But calls to invade Myanmar are unwise and irresponsible:

That’s why it’s time to consider a more serious option: invading Burma. Some observers, including former USAID director Andrew Natsios, have called on the U.S. to unilaterally begin air drops to the Burmese people regardless of what the junta says. The Bush Administration has so far rejected the idea — “I can’t imagine us going in without the permission of the Myanmar government,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday — but it’s not without precedent: as Natsios pointed out to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. has facilitated the delivery of humanitarian aid without the host government’s consent in places like Bosnia and Sudan.

The urge to do something in face of crisis, or evil, is well understood. However we have enough experience that such invasion isn’t as simple, short live, effort. Considering using military force, that will change the current balance in East Asia can’t ignore the interest and the reactions of other countries in that region - china is the most prominent of them. Moreover, those who advocate for such invasion usually ignore the assumed responsibilities by the invading countries after they successfully invade. Such efforts aren’t limited to relief effort but must include developing replacement for the previous regime. We don’t need to search historical cases, although we can, since the results of such efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq can alerts us to the unavoidable failure such efforts brings.

Armies are limited organizations - they can capture and area, defend it and destroy enemy forces. Observer tend to get illusion concept of the military abilities because they are comparatively efficient, disciplined and can execute tasks in short notice. One can use the military forces successfully to deploy relief efforts. But using armies to achieve political outcome such as nation building, developing a healthy political culture and other dreamed goals - never worked and there is no reason to believe that will magically work in Myanmar.

Furthermore, even if we assume that there is a chance for successes for the foreign invasion, one have to wonder if global strategy of removing evil regimes is based not on well thought plan but rather on natural disaster. Is Myanmar the worse place for its people in the world today? Or is it simply the current news focus? The rush to war is yet again premature, not fully thought and will lead to even worse results than avoiding such course of action

There are basically only two reason to go to war - “Positive” and “Negative”. The terms might be somewhat confusing as Negative war is a defensive, and it is negative only because the goal of the war is to prevent from your adversaries to achieve their goal. It is important to note that the positive war or usually the immoral one, the imperialistic and those who tend to fail at the end. The call for invasion into other country, regardless of its motives, is a call for the wrong kind of war.