Left Blames Delay in Cyclone Aid on Bush Administration

The Wall Street Journal reports on the strained response of the government of Myanmar, which has begun to allow U.S. aid shipments into the country:

The Myanmar junta's refusal to accept foreign help stems from its strained relations with the international community, especially the West, which has regularly criticized its refusal to allow democracy....

The acceptance of the U.S. relief flight Monday could be "beginning of a long line of assistance from the United States," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told reporters in Crawford, Texas, over the weekend. "They're going to need our help for a long time."

The plane carried 28,000 pounds of supplies, including mosquito nets, blankets and water in an operation dubbed "Joint Task Force Carrying Response." Lt. Col. Douglas Powell, the U.S. Marines spokesman for the operation, said the U.S. had 11,000 servicemen and four ships in the region for an annual military exercise, Cobra Gold, which could be harnessed to help the mercy mission.

What's interesting is how some on the left are blaming the crisis on the United States, rather than Myanmar's military regime:

Here's Think Progress attacking First Lady Laura Bush:

“The response to the cyclone is just the most recent example of the junta’s failure to meet its people’s basic needs,” she concluded. Yet the Bush administration has also turned its back on the hurricane survivors...

"Hurricane survivors" is a reference to the U.S. Katrina disaster in 2005, where we saw an inept government response at all levels of the federal system - especially by Governor Kathleen Blanco and Mayor Ray Nagin - but the left is here making the Bush administration into a greater impediment to international humanitarian assistance than Myanmar's own obstructionist dictatorship.

Here's the left-wing Mahablog attacking the Bush administration's response:

Around the globe, nations and international relief agencies are scrambling to send as much aid as possible as quickly as possible.

Well, except for the United States. The Bush Administration released a whopping $250,000 from a U.S. Embassy emergency fund for the Burma relief effort. The Bushies refuse to send more until the government of Burma allows American disaster assessment teams into Burma to, um, assess.

Keep in mind that the U.S. will be the world leader in providing the infrastructure of logistical relief, as was the case in the Indonesia tsunami relief efforts in 2005.

But it's easier to attack the United States than to acknowledge the responsibility of the Myanmar junta itself, which has slowed the delivery of goods from all international actors:

Relief workers who are still prohibited from entering Myanmar warned that it could take weeks to reach many cyclone victims due to the nation's decrepit infrastructure. Such a delay will increase the number of people at risk and raise the possibility of unrest, they said.

As many as 1.5 million people -- including more than 200,000 now believed to be congregating in temporary camps along Myanmar's coast -- face an increasing risk of epidemics of malaria, cholera and other potentially deadly diseases, aid workers said....

The country's secretive military government, which continues to withhold visas for most foreign aid workers, has increased its surveillance in Yangon, the largest city in the region, and is closely watching the movements of opposition politicians, monks, activists and foreigners, according to a Yangon resident.

Truckloads of soldiers were seen throughout the city on Sunday, patrolling public areas and monasteries that were at the forefront of pro-democracy protests that erupted across the city in September.

"Both the government and general public fear that an uprising may happen, based on the general dissatisfaction" with the handling of cyclone relief, said a local tour guide contacted by email.

Many people are distraught with what they believe to be apathy from the government and the international community, the guide said, and are unaware that Myanmar's ruling junta has blocked many foreign aid agencies from entering the country. A doctor in the town of Bogalay, in the heart of the affected region, said many victims are drinking unpurified water from lakes and other places, with many freshwater sources littered with decaying human bodies and animal carcasses.

Note the key here: The military junta's blocking aid from getting through to those in deathly need.

Here's this on Myanmar's regime from the Australian:

The Orwellian character of the regime has been reflected in its management of the disaster response. As thousands starved, state television aired programs with smiling actors singing about "national unity", and happy army officers handing out international food aid packages with their names embossed to thankful peasants. The state-run media yesterday trumpted a "massive turnout" in the national referendum, but made no mention of the tens of thousands still missing in the cyclone's wake. Behind this bamboo curtain lies a different story - one of starving soldiers pillaging what little food is left from survivors and of bodies being secretly buried by officials hoping to downplay the extent of the tragedy. The few aid workers on the ground say the Government wants total control of the situation, even though it has no experience in relief efforts.

It is little wonder that the international community is growing increasingly impatient with the Burmese regime.

But it's all the fault of the U.S. government, to hear it from the lefties. It's a symptom of Bush Derangement Syndrome.

One of the most cynically ruthless Third World dictatorships resists multilateral efforts to prevent a mass calamity, and we have the purveyors of left-wing wisdom boiling all the problems down to "the imperial stinginess" of the Bush administration.

God help the world community if the lefties come to power next January.