“Yes, the Burmese junta is reclusive and tyrannical. But when a hundred thousand innocents may have died in a catastrophe, and many more tens of thousands of lives hang in the balance, the time is not right to make a regime, already paranoid of the outside world, even more jittery of outside interference — especially when the West is trying to get emergency workers and relief supplies in to the restrictive nation. (The administration has made a similar mistake by saber-rattling against a paranoid and nuclear-armed North Korean regime.) Any administration criticism of the junta should have been held at least until the country is able to get back on its feet. Once the disaster had already occurred, it was especially unhelpful for the First Lady to focus on the irrelevant matter of whether the Burmese government had issued adequate advance warning. Furthermore, the secretive junta was slow to open the country to outside relief workers and supplies, but the U.S. president’s public criticism certainly was not going to — and did not — help matters.” (05/12/08)