Burma’s sadistocrats ensured that huge numbers of people would suffer from the recent cyclone long before the storm began to coalesce. Will Wilkinson had a fine commentary this morning on “Marketplace” explaining how:

Back in the early 1950’s, Burma was the wealthiest nation in Southeast Asia. But today, after a half-century of socialism and authoritarian rule, it’s one of the poorest countries in the world.

When a regime mows down a gathering of political protestors, we sit up and take notice. But when it actively impoverishes its people with economic policies long ago proven harmful, we’re too willing to see this not as a choice to which men may be held accountable, but as a natural fact, under no one’s control.

So it wasn’t fated that tens of thousands of Burmese would have so little shelter from the storm. They could have been richer, safer. . .

Economic growth creates roofs that don’t blow away, walls that don’t crumble, hospitals to tend the sick, and generators to keep to the ventilators on.

Scott,

If you are trying to say conservatives are hypocritical in the extreme I give you a high five for correctness.

If you are trying to say we should not do business with rogue regimes I have to argue and protest, not that it will do me any good.

We have to do business with the Burmese that is, not the Burmese that should be or could have been.

There are upper limits to American power and influence. An obsession with squeechy liberal human rights is an invitation for us all to sit in our darkened houses burning sticks and twigs to keep warm and staying home because we have no oil.

You are probably thinking that is ridiculous. Maybe. Depends on which of us understands the world better.

By the way, foreigners, like the Putin quote from today’s T-D, don’t fault us for being evil, since we are almost invariably less evil than the other guy, they fault us for pretending not to be as evil as them.

Not necessarily a fair and just charge. Just more politics.

What Putin really objects to is our ability to screw up his Slavic ambitions in Bosnia, his turf. Human rights is a noble objective but one that falls flat across large areas of the globe because it does not describe the real world.

Yes, you may find me heartless for saying that. I’m just pragmatic, or else I have a flawed understanding of the outside world. When was the last time I landed in Bosnia under sniper fire ? Huh ? I ask you. When the phone rings at 3am I tell ‘em to go to hell. I’m trying to get some sleep fer cryin out loud.

Chevron has huge gas concessions in Burma, as well as partial ownership of a major pipeline there (built with slave labor).

PNAC member Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State under Colin Powell, also performed Unocal contract work.

No stranger to the pipeline business, Armitage was a member of the Burma/Myanmar Forum, a group that received major funding from Unocal.

In 1997, he was implicated in a lawsuit filed by Burmese villagers who suffered human rights abuses during the construction of a Unocal pipeline. Halliburton, under another PNAC member, Dick Cheney, also performed contract work on the Burmese project.

Socialist policies don’t fail Bart, they’re undermined by greedy capitalists. Socialism is a proven theory found workable by a concensus of humanities professors on campuses around the nation. It’s actually quite simple. You appoint a board of highly enlightened and intellectually superior progressives to micro manage society. When their policies fall apart and create an unlivable system, you just demand more money thru tuition increases and hire more.

How it would work in the real world I don’t know. That place scares me.

I agree to a limited extent.

There is no question that harsh authoritarian rule can result in an extremely wealthly elite cadre of Republicans and a swelling underbelly of discontented peasant Democrats.

I was being facetious. No comparison.

My only quibble with this commentary is that utopian ideological zealots tend to think there is some patented formula for success that will lift all boats to high water and lead us to the land of milk and honey. This is actually true, just to a very limited extent though. Leave off the utopian ideals please.

The Chinese people have jobs in part because the Burmese don’t have jobs. In the future, that may reverse. The Japanese have entire industries they yanked away from us at our own peril, which are being yanked away again by the Koreans, only to go to whoever is next in line.

The world needs widgets. It is largely indifferent to who manufactures them, but only a few widget plants are needed. Why should a widget plant be located in Burma instead of China or Thailand ? Not that simple of course, but that is the concept.

The socialism and authoritarian rule have certainly impeded investment, put countless roadblocks to progress, cyclone relief only one example, and scared off foreign interests who might help.

It’s true Burma could have been a wealthy success story. However, it isn’t clear whether that success would have come at the expense of another country in the region or not. Other Asian countries that did succeed, like Singapore, succeeded even without natural resources, but there is no indication they provide any services at all that could not have gone to the next in line. It’s survival of the fittest.

It isn’t natural birthright. It’s competition.

It’s king of the hill not king and I.

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