<< Previous   of   Next >>

ADVERTISEMENT

HAVE YOUR SAY

Feel strongly about something? Share it with the community by writing a letter to the editor.

You’ll need to include your name, address and daytime phone number. (We’ll only publish your name and hometown.) We reserve the right to edit letters, but if you keep yours to 300 words or less, we won’t ask you to shorten it. If your letter is published, please wait 30 days before submitting another.

Send it to:

E-mail: letters@heraldnet.com

Mail: Letters section The Herald P.O. Box 930 Everett, WA 98206

Fax: 425-339-3458

Have a question about letters? Contact Carol MacPherson (cmacpherson@heraldnet.com or 425-339-3472).

How to take a disaster and make it even worse

It's hard to know which has been more destructive: the cyclone that laid waste to much of coastal Myanmar last week or the lack of response to it by the nation's brutal junta.

At least the storm that packed 132-mph winds and triggered a massive ocean surge wasn't a willful act. The same can't be said of the junta's failure to adequately warn residents of the destruction it knew was coming, or of its refusal to immediately allow other nations to help with life-saving relief, despite their readiness and willingness to do so.

Photos from Myanmar, also known as Burma, rekindle agonizing images of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed an estimated 225,000 people in 11 countries -- destroyed villages, flooded cities, grieving family members, children with dazed expressions. One U.S. diplomat said Wednesday that the death toll could rise well beyond 100,000. More than 1 million could be homeless, as cholera and other infectious diseases spread.

Yet the military rulers of this long-oppressed nation, which shares borders with India, China and Thailand, have so far resisted many offers of aid from the West, their well-developed sense of paranoia apparently obscuring any hint of humanity. This is, after all, a regime that shot into crowds last September to put down a non-violent pro-democracy uprising led by Buddhist monks.

Some relief supplies are getting in, but as precious hours tick away, direct help that would save lives is being kept out. The U.S. Air Force stands ready with planes in Thailand to carry supplies and people to stricken areas. U.S. Navy ships with helicopters are in the area and could be mobilized quickly. Yet the junta resists direct U.S. aid.

"It should be a simple matter," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday. "This is not a matter of politics, this is a matter of a humanitarian crisis and it should be a matter that the government of Burma wants to see its people receive the help that is available to them."

Nature can deal a cruel blow. But no more so, it seems, than some people.



For information on aid to the victims of the cyclone, visit www.usaid.gov or www.redcross.org.