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They Didn’t Need the World to Save Them
Posted by Raven on June 18th, 2008
Well aren’t we darned?
YANGON, Myanmar — More than six weeks have passed since Cyclone Nargis swept through the Irrawaddy Delta in southern Myanmar, leaving a trail of flattened villages and broken lives and arousing international sympathy that turned to anguish as the military government obstructed foreign aid.
Now doctors and aid workers returning from remote areas of the delta are offering a less pessimistic picture of the human cost of the delay in reaching survivors.
They say they have seen no signs of starvation or widespread outbreaks of disease. While it is estimated that the cyclone may have killed 130,000 people, the number of lives lost specifically because of the junta’s slow response to the disaster appears to have been smaller than expected.
The people are hardy. They know how to survive. And make the best of such awful conditions. They didn’t need the world to save them.
Of course, just glance through all the headlines bashing the Junta and remember this: Maybe we don’t have a clue what we’re complaining about. Maybe, just maybe, the people didn’t NEED the worlds help. The UN, US, Europe, the whole lot of us, should reflect upon this and not forget the subtle lessons here.
June 20th, 2008 at 12:15 am
Interesting development. The junta is a group of tyrants who had their own execrable reasons for keeping international groups out, but perhaps they ended up doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.
What this may do is to demonstrate that massive foreign interventions may be unneeded (or may even make things worse) – whereas more measured support of local agencies may be far more helpful to the disaster victims. Sort of like using a scalpel for surgery rather than a machete.
Maybe we can learn from this when the next natural disaster strikes…
June 20th, 2008 at 8:57 am
I have no doubt the Junta are awful…well, I should have doubt since the only info we have is from MSM reports. It says a lot though, that things are no where near as bad as said MSM howled about. MILLION dead. STARVING PEOPLE. DISEASE. All not true. All assumption.