The Bush administration should have concentrated on providing relief instead of trying to score points by decrying the Burmese military junta that there was insufficient warning of the coming cyclone. Yes, the junta is reclusive and tyrannical. But when a hundred thousand innocents may have died in a catastrophe, and innumerable lives hang in the balance, the time is not right to make a regime, already paranoid of the outside world, even more jittery of outside interference – especially when the West is trying to get emergency workers and relief supplies into the restrictive nation. Any administration criticism of the junta should have been held at least until the country is able to get back on its feet. Once the disaster had already occurred, it was especially unhelpful to focus on the irrelevant matter of whether the government had issued adequate advance warning. Furthermore, the secretive junta was slow to open the country to outside relief workers and supplies, but the U.S. president’s public criticism certainly was not going to – and did not – help matters. What about the Bush administration response to the Katrina storm in 2005, if you compare the resources of the two countries?
Mohd. Salahuddin
Mulund (W), Mumbai