GOOD MORNING MYANMAR…
2030 by Jeff Hess
Cliff Kincaid has written an attack piece on presidential candidate Sen. Barak Obama (D-Ill.) attempting to make the case that while Obama may pull the troops out of Iraq, he very likely to send those troops into other hot spots around the world for humanitarian reasons. Kincaid cites Haiti and the former Yugoslavia as historical examples;
and Myanmar as a prime target.
From the Apache Junction, Arizona, National Ledger:
while the U.S. may get out of Iraq, a new Democratic Administration could lead to more U.S. military intervention around the world, a bigger Army, and even a military draft.
Ooo. Now there’s a boogieman.
Do those young people cheering Obama realize that, if he wins the presidency, they may get a U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq but are likely to get U.S. and U.N. military intervention in other areas of the world, supposedly on humanitarian grounds? Under a Democratic Administration, the U.S. might have more wars on its hands.
Like one in Myanmar.
Ironically, this message of increased U.S. military intervention in the rest of the world is being fed by Sylvester Stallone”s new “Rambo” movie about an old U.S. soldier leading a team of mercenaries against Burmese soldiers.
OK, Cliff, we get the idea. You want a Republican president. Maybe someone like John McCain who is guaranteed to keep American military personnel dying in Iraq? That’s better than picking a Democratic president who might (and that’s a big might) pull the troops out of Iraq and use them in a place like Myanmar where the democratically elected head of the government has been under house arrest for nearly 20 years?
That for me is the elephant in the conversation. The people of Myanmar held an election in 1990 and The National League for Democracy won 80 percent of the vote. The ruling generals actually thought they should have won and declared the election invalid.
The generals then placed the winning presidential candidate, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest where she has remained with the exception of a few brief respites.
If the NLD, the legitimately elected leadership of the people of Myanmar, were to call on the United States for help to right this wrong, I think that would be a proper use of our military.
It wouldn’t be that simple, but it makes more sense than the lies that committed us to Iraq.
What do you think?
I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is 
I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: 
My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. 
