Help for Myanmar

As a kid I grew up on Rambo. I even hid in the furry tip of a fallen-over pine tree once with a thirty-year-old set of binoculars and eyeballed my neighbors, a retired husband and wife who manicured their lawn. It was raining. I was training myself for the Green Berets.

Now, tonight, twenty-six years later, a little action hero worship creeps into me: I wish right now that we had a bicep-bulging President who would lean into the camera from the Oval Office and say: “Myanmar, we’re bringing food whether you like it or not!”

The death toll numbers vary, but aid agencies project a number as high as 100,000. Let me say that again: 100,000. Fill Neyland Stadium on a football Saturday.

There are millions—MILLIONS—of people in need of water and food. Little children starving to death, crying themselves dry with dehydration. Or dying from diarrhea because the water available is full of viscous little microbes. Imagine that: Knowing that you need water to live, feeling your lip-skin curl like drying mud, and cupping your hands in the tainted well anyway only to slurp what you know will kill you.

The military junta that controls Myanmar is keeping out aid workers. These generals are keeping food and water, rescue teams, and medical help from millions of people because they’re paranoid about losing their power position.

According to NPR, “Myanmar’s military regime distributed international aid Saturday but plastered the boxes with the names of top generals in an apparent effort to turn the relief effort for last week’s devastating cyclone into a propaganda exercise.”

So as grandmothers floated face down all over their country, Myanmar’s military cutthroats decided they should take the time to slap political stickers on the boxes of food sent from other nations.

These generals I’m sure are safe and smoking big cigars somewhere, twirling their snifters of scotch in the air like the villains they are.

I really wish President Bush would roll his sleeves up past his elbows and point his stubby little index at the camera: “Myanmar rulers, you’re worried about keeping your power now? Wait till I send in the marines. We’ll pin you up on a wall, bug collection style, and let you watch and starve while we feed your citizens.”