A flexible conscience
Les MacDonald; Balmain; 14/6/08
The counsel of “conscience” from Madeleine Albright about the unquestionably criminal attitudes of the Burmese junta to the welfare of the country’s citizens, needs historical context. In 1996, Albright, then US secretary of state, calmly asserted on the US 60 Minutes program, in response to a question about the effects of the genocidal United Nations sanctions imposed on the Iraqi people, that “we think the price is worth it”. Her reference was to the deaths of half a million Iraqi children as a direct result of sanctions so unconscionable two successive UN officials responsible for their implementation resigned in disgust.The principal enforcer of these sanctions was the US government, led in these efforts by the redoubtable Albright.
See: http://www.smh.com.au/letters/index.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2
Since Iraq, the world is scared to help
Madeleine Albright; 13/6/08; Madeleine Albright was the United States secretary of state from 1997 to 2001.
The Burmese Government’s criminally neglectful response to last month’s cyclone, and the world’s response to that response, illustrate three grim realities today: totalitarian governments are alive and well; their neighbours are reluctant to pressure them to change; and the notion of national sovereignty as sacred is gaining ground, helped in no small part by the disastrous results of the American invasion of Iraq. Indeed, many of the world’s necessary interventions in the decade before the invasion - in places like Haiti and the Balkans - would seem impossible in today’s climate. The first and most obvious reality is the survival of totalitarian government in an age of global communications and democratic progress. Burma’s military junta employs the same tools used by the likes of Stalin to crush dissent and monitor the lives of citizens. The needs of the victims of Cyclone Nargis mean nothing to a regime focused solely on preserving its own authority.
See: http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/since-iraq-the-world-is-scared-to-help/2008/06/12/1212863837120.html?page=2