Neptunus Lex

Time magazine asks whether or not it’s time to “give war a chance” in Burma over the regime’s reluctance to let humanitarian aid across the border:

The trouble is that the Burmese haven’t shown the ability or willingness to deploy the kind of assets needed to deal with a calamity of this scale ‚Äî and the longer Burma resists offers of help, the more likely it is that the disaster will devolve beyond anyone’s control. “We’re in 2008, not 1908,” says Jan Egeland, the former U.N. emergency relief coordinator. “A lot is at stake here. If we let them get away with murder we may set a very dangerous precedent.” That’s why it’s time to consider a more serious option: invading Burma.

As Wretchard points out, the only country with the capability of “invading” Burma that could plausibly be motivated to do so is, well: Us.

Yes folks, the “good old U.S. military” — the same one whose recruiting stations Code Pink wants to drive out of Berkeley; the same one Barack Obama wants to reduce; the same “good old U.S. military” that is reviled as incompetent, perennially defeated when it is killing children by the thousands or bombing baby milk factories. That’s what’s going to do it. Invade Burma, I mean.

There is a school of international policy which holds that the only morally acceptable uses of military force are humanitarian interventions where we have no strategic interest. That is only appropriate to risk the lives of US servicemen when there is nothing to gain.

Look for it soon in a polling booth near you.