Maybe it's my obsession with history repeating itself, or with propaganda that claims that it does, to promote a certain political interpretation of past events. Maybe here I am falling into the latter category, but when I read the headline (see link to MSNBC article below) that the US government is "outraged" by the fact that the government of Myanmar has let days pass without providing life-saving assistance to its citizens, I immediately saw an irony. Although there are important differences: Myanmar is led by a military junta and is an actual dictatorship (in Spanish they have "dictadura" and "dictablanda" playing on the word for dictatorship which in Spanish is composed of "dict" root of to dictate and dura or hard. The second term is made up word with the "hard" substituted for "soft." So maybe one could use a bit of hyperbole to refer to Dubya's regime as a dictablanda? In any event, to see the Bush Administration commenting on Myanmar's horrific neglect of its citizens and obstruction of delivery of external aid, I can't help but think of another situation when people died and were left homeless, albeit on a much smaller scale, Katrina.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24514879/
2 comments:
Agreed that the US totally botched the Katrina disaster, but in no way did they disallow aid to get to people.
We must hope that the fully loaded planes with supplies and food that are sitting in Thailand can be allowed into Burma to abate the ever growing death toll and aid the victims.
Yes of course you are right, they didn't prevent the aid from coming but through their complete incompetence, all of the politicians involved whatever their party, may as well have.....
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