Kanbawza Win

Will America betray the Burmese cause, is the big question in the minds of every Burmese even though they may not speak out? A review of US policy announce by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that Obama administration has decided to engage directly with Junta as part of international efforts to promote democracy, but sanctions will remain employing both tools.  The very fact that the announcement of the new American policy towards Burma takes more than nine months proves that there was a heated debate among helm of the American policy makers. The ethno-democratic forces are not opposed to a direct talk as only with mixture of dialogue and pressure through sanctions and public criticism will nudge these Burmese men in uniform to a right direction.

One can see the writings on the walls when for the first time in nine years, the U S allowed Burma’s Foreign Minister Nyan Win to come to Washington, a sign of softening U.S. policy toward the military Junta that has trampled the country for half a century. He met with U.S.-Asian business council and Sen. James Webb, the Virginia Democrat who has advocated closer ties to the Junta. Nyan Win’s 24-hour sojourn appears to be part of a new policy by the Obama administration towards Burma of warmly shaking the hands soak with blood.  It is already known that Gen. Thein Sein, is schedule to appear at the ongoing U.N. G. A. In New York, and is expected to meet there with Kurt M. Campbell, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs. The Junta has responded by releasing 120 political prisoners out of 2,000 and is rumoured to be looking for a new effective lobbying firm for lobbying was taken seriously by the Burmese regime six years ago, when the junta paid the Washington-based DCI Group $348,000 to lobby on its behalf. This time they are ready to give millions of dollars to any successful firm and maybe Webb can help them find one.

James Webb, a one-man blur of diplomatic activity usually considered as a bull in a China shop, gallivanting around Asia upsetting the delicate balance the Washington foreign-policy, did not even comprehend the difference between the words “Myanmar” and “Burma.” For clarity sake let me emphasis that the word MyAnMar originated from the South Indian word “Mramar” if originality is to be emphasised, later in the Burmese language it was known as Myanmah ending with “h”. The ending “mah” is pronounced softly as in the second syllable of the word “mother” in the English language. Literally translated it should be Myanma Naing Ngan, meaning the country of Myanma. The Generals, quite illiterate in the English language put “r” at the end to please their fancies. Even in the contemporary history of Burma, Bogyoke Aung San, the architect of modern Burma, (father of the Daw Aung San Suu Kyi) that initiated the independence movement founded Doh Bama Asaiyone and not the Do Myanmar Asaiyone.  The Romanized version of the Burmese Generals in changing the fair name of the country by decree and forcing everyone within its clutch to comply stems from the illusion that names in English could be changed by dictators. Sweden calls itself, as Severige, Germany as Deutschland, Spain as Espania, China as Chung Gao and so forth but the world recognizes them in their English names. So why should the free world now acquiesce to the crassness of these narco generals?  Besides the Union of Burma is made up of so many tribes and national ethnic races that came to consensus in 1947 (Panglong Agreement) to found the Union of Burma, and does not belong only to the Myanma race only but to every ethnic nationalities residing in the country. Most of the Burmese Generals belong to this major race called Myanmar and Myanmarnization over the other ethnic races is seen as a prelude to help justify their grip to power. This is the embryo and crux of why ethnic cleansing is still going on. It is somewhat similar to the Khmer Rouge changing the name of Cambodia to Kampuchea, or the Sinhalese chauvinist who changed from Ceylon to Sri Lanka leaving out the Tamils with tragic consequences. Hence the word MyAnMar is both phonetically and politically wrong. So when Webb (describe by his supporters as extensive experience in Asia) acquiesce to the theory that dictators can change the name of the country, the only conclusion is that he is indirectly encouraging the Generals in their ethnic cleansing policy.

He is schedule to hold a hearing on 1^st Oct to evaluate the effectiveness of the US approach. Webb’s office said the hearing “will examine Burma’s current economic and political situation and discuss how the country’s long history of internal turmoil and ethnic conflicts has affected the development of democracy,” One wonders whether the English saying of ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’ will come true that Burma is not a monolithic whole but a cluster of principalities before it become part of the British empire. The ethnic nationalities join the Myanmar group to gain independence from Britain known as the Panglong Agreement in Feb. 1947 to form the Union of Burma as a test case and if not satisfactory can secede from the Union was explicitly written in the Union Constitution. It was initiated by General Aung San the father of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi whose family tradition the people trusted. Hence the country belongs not only to the Myanmar group but also the non Myanmar. If Webb has known this I am quite positive that he would get the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi instead of Yetaw

Senator Webb`s writings in the “New York Times” China has dramatically increase its economic and political influence in Myanmar, furthering a dangerous strategic imbalance in the region, clearly indicates engagement with the egregious Burmese regime through economic opening because sanctions have failed. Even though it proves that his advocacy is rough riding shod over the Burmese people’s struggle for genuine democracy and human rights it hurt the core of American values founded by the Great American leaders as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. No doubt apologist Professor David Steinberg of Georgetown University applauded him when he wrote in the “Asia Times”We should applaud the modest beginning Sen. Webb’s visit has created, and explore its positive ramifications and blamed leading Burmese freedom fighters U Win Tin and U Pyinya Zawta who have risk their lives for freedom and democracy — of “missing the point of Webb’s visit.” The one irrefutable conclusion from these critics is that nobody can shake their theory of their business overruling their conscious.

Webb has surprised Burma-watchers around the world when he declared that Suu Kyi was on board with his plan to coddle Burma’s repressive regime by dropping U.S. sanctions. But later it was discovered that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi had not discussed the sanctions with anyone. Yet Webb still stands by his “impression and comment “Only the people who were in the meeting know what was said.” Imagine if South Africa’s apartheid regime had granted segregationist Senator James Eastland access to an imprisoned Nelson Mandela only to have Eastland emerge and declare that Mandela was a strong advocate for closer relations between their two countries.

Why Senator Webb is shilling for the Junta (and some of his friends in the business community) and trying to leverage Suu Kyi’s moral authority to get sanctions dropped. Perhaps  “Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason, than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear.” if I were to quote Hannah Arendt words. In the current American political landscape, truth is not merely misrepresented or falsified; it is overtly mocked.  As is well known, the Bush administration repeatedly lied to the American public, furthering a legacy of government mistrust while carrying the practice of distortion to new and almost unimaginable heights, such as Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, Iraq was making deals with al-Qaeda and, perhaps the most infamous of all, the United States did not engage in torture. All these are still fresh in the Burmese minds.

“Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings.” For instance, when the government wasn’t lying to promote dangerous policies, it willfully produced and circulated fake news reports in order to provide the illusion that the lies and the policies that flowed from them were supported by selective members of the media and the larger public. The previous US administrations deceits and lies were almost never challenged by right-wing media “patriots,” who were too busy denouncing as un-American anyone who questioned Bush’s official stream of deception and deceit.

While lying, misrepresentation and the deliberate denial of truth become acceptable practices firmly entrenched in the Wild West of talk radio, cable television and the dominant media. Fact finding, arguments bolstered by evidence and informed analysis have always been fragile entities, but they risk annihilation in a culture in which it becomes difficult to distinguish between an opinion and an argument. Knowledge is increasingly controlled by a handful of corporations and public relations firms and is systemically cleansed of any complexity. Lying and deceitfulness are all too often viewed as just another acceptable tactic in what has become most visibly the pathology of politics and a theater of cruelty dominated by a growing chorus of media hate mongers inflaming an authoritarian populist rage laced with a not too subtle bigotry.

Lying and deception have become so commonplace in the dominant press that such practices appear to have no moral significance and provoke few misgivings, even when they have important political consequences.

I thought that, “Lying the very concept of truth” is the monopoly of the Burmese Junta but was surprised when I discovered that Lying as common sense and deceit as politics-as-usual joins the embrace of provocation in a coupling that empties politics and agency of any substance and feeds into a corporate state and militarized culture in which matters of judgment, morality, thoughtfulness, and compassion seem to disappear from public view. What is the social cost of such flight from reality, if not the death of democratic politics, critical thought and civic agency? When a society loses sight of the distinction between fact and fiction, truth-telling and lying, what happens is that truth, critical thought and fact finding as conditions of democracy are rendered trivial and reduced to a collection of mere platitudes, which in turn reinforces moral indifference and political impotence. Under such circumstances, language actually becomes the mechanism for promoting political powerlessness.

Webb’s version of Truth and his hypothesis vis a vis China will drive the people of Burma more into the Chinese arms as they would see that China is the lesser evil if compared to the United States that has a good record of betraying democracy and human rights. The people of Burma remembers that Dick Cheney, who has invested in Burma once referred to torture as “enhanced interrogation” so as to sugarcoat its brutality, and then appeared on national television in 2009 only to defend torture by arguing that if such practices work, they are perfectly justified, even if they violate the law. This is the same Cheney who, appearing on the May 31, 2005, “Larry King Live” show, attempted to repudiate charges of government torture by claiming, without irony, that the detainees “have been well treated, treated humanely and decently.” This type of discourse recalls George Orwell’s dystopian world of “1984″ in which the Ministry of Truth produces lies and the Ministry of Love tortures people. In such an atmosphere will the people of Burma placed their hope on the US?