Word: burma
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...deploying American power to remove a regime is not the danger it poses to the U.S. but its wickedness, why stop at Iraq? As Mandelbaum wrote seven years ago, "The world is a big place filled with distressed people." Why not ease the suffering of those in, say, Burma or Zimbabwe...
...some current policies - the willingness to speckle the Islamic world with American garrisons or award contracts for the reconstruction of wrecked nations to favored companies. His loathing of imperialism was visceral, because he knew, firsthand, what it meant. In the 1920s Orwell had served in the imperial police in Burma, then a British colony, and the experience left him with an almost physical hatred for the behavior - in fact, the very language and look - of the imperialist class. Last week I reread Burmese Days, Orwell's 1934 novel based on his time in Asia. It is not a great book...
...would surely have resisted the idea that Americans are bound to behave badly in Iraq simply because all previous imperialists have done so when given a chance. He would certainly have noted that the post-imperial experience has often been a miserable one. Since independence from Britain in 1948, Burma, for example, has been raped by a succession of military regimes. Self-rule does not necessarily mean wise rule...
...that said, I think Orwell would have warned against a long-term military presence in conquered nations. Give young soldiers life-or-death authority, far from home, and you should not be surprised if power goes to their heads. "In Burma," Orwell once wrote, "I was constantly struck by the fact that the common soldiers were the best-hated section of the white community, and, judged simply by their behavior, they certainly deserved to be." Americans should not want their young men and women in uniform to be hated, for to hate someone is the first step to killing them...
...Burma, to the disgust of foreign observers, Aung San Suu Kyi is under detention?a victim of the junta's latest crackdown on her democracy movement. But she and her party have only been cowed, not crushed. In Laos, no political dissent has been allowed in 28 years, nor any right of assembly. Scores of political prisoners and youths have been detained for years in dark cells without trial; many have been tortured. Christians are persecuted, told to denounce their faith under threat of imprisonment. And there is nothing merry about the Hmong women and children trapped in the mountains...