Competence

Andante does a nice compare and contrast on the reaction of the Hedgemony to hurricane Katrina, and the reaction of the Chinese government to the earthquake.

How about the Hedgemony and the Burmese junta?

I wrote about the USS Bataan, which wasn’t allowed to help New Orleans.

The BBC writes about the same class of vessel, the USS Essex, barred from Burma

The US amphibious assault ship, USS Essex, is moored off the coast of Burma, prohibited by the military government from swinging into action to help cyclone victims. The BBC’s Nick Bryant reports from aboard the ship.
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In the choppy waters of the Andaman Sea right now, that mission carries the operation name “Caring Response”, and involves a four-boat US naval task force which sits just 60 nautical miles off Burma’s low-lying Irrawaddy Delta.

Helicopters loaded with aid could get there within 30 minutes. Landing craft, which sit within the bellies of these massive amphibious assault ships, would take less than an hour.

Water purifying machines, ambulances, heavy trucks, medical teams are ready for the off. Tens of thousands of gallons of life-saving drinking water are just over the horizon from the Burmese coastline.
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Rear Admiral Carol M. Pottenger, the commander of the task force, told me that she has been ordered to respect the sovereignty of Burma and have made no contingency plan to go in without permission from the military junta.

One of the few things that her task force does not have the capability is to conduct airdrops – that is to say attach parachutes to the pallets of aid and then drop them on communities or the countryside below.

That is not the way the US military operates. It is dangerous for a start. It is also a fairly indiscriminate way to distribute aid.

Like all the Americans, she has been struck by the inconsistency of Burma allowing in American C130 transport planes into Rangoon – over a dozen of them – but its refusal to let the aid come from offshore.

She suspects that Burma wants to control the distribution of the aid by making Rangoon the point of arrival.

But many of the roads in the Irrawaddy Delta have been washed away, and Burma does not have an adequate heavy airlift capability – which is precisely the service which the Americans can offer.

It took a very long time for the Shrubbery to show up in New Orleans, and the junta followed his example according to the BBC: Burma leader meets storm victims

The leader of Burma’s military junta has met victims of the country’s devastating cyclone for the first time.

More than two weeks since the storm hit, General Than Shwe visited relief camps near Rangoon.

A senior UN envoy has arrived in Burma to urge the military regime to accept more international aid. UN chief Ban Ki-moon is expected to visit soon.

Burma says some 78,000 people have died since the cyclone, but aid agencies say many more may die without urgent help.

Many evacuees from Katrina still don’t have permanent homes, and CBS reports Myanmar Victims Have Nowhere To Go

The monks share their food with the survivors. They offer them a patch of dry land to sleep on – but they can’t protect them.

The government is forcing people out of the monasteries and back to their villages, where there is no shelter, no food, no clean water, more than two weeks after the storm, survivors are still on the run.

A nearby soccer stadium is now home to 173 families. They’ve come a long way.

It is unfortunate that the junta decided to model their reaction to cyclone Nargis on the actions of the Hedgemony, rather than the Chinese.

The BBC has useful graphics at their Burma Cyclone maps and satellite images page, and the UN disaster map [PDF].