Burma Cyclone

In an editorial in TheStar, the online version of Canada’s leading newspaper, The Toronto Star, columnist Thomas Walkom provides a view that for a dictatorship, the Burmese military junta is not acting unreasonably.

In the editorial titled “Burma’s leaders are not irrational,” Walkon cites an example from Saddam’s Iraq to explain the junta’s stance of not taking up offers by the U.S., Canada and France to offer their troops to deliver aid.

“It is not even being unusually paranoid in its suspicion of the UN. The world used to belittle Saddam Hussein’s claim that some UN weapons inspectors sent into Iraq after the first Gulf War worked for the CIA. But, as former American weapons inspector Scott Ritter revealed in his book, Iraq Confidential, Saddam was correct.”

Walkon offers a fresh, alternate perspective on the cyclone response and concludes that factoring in the constraints, foreign governments should keep an eye on the ball i.e. - preventing further casualties and getting aid and relief to the maximum number of people, as fast as possible.

Read the full editorial here.

–Divya