Lisa, I’m all for the option of invading just about anyone, at least in the sense that I believe in a doctrine of conditional sovereignty. That’s to say, there’s no reason why a dictatorship should expect its sovereignty to be as respected as, say, New Zealand’s. If it’s a good idea to help Burma, it’s not suddenly a bad idea because they refuse to issue the requisite visas.

However, I’d be reluctant to send the boys into Rangoon on the say so of Time magazine. If we’ve learned anything from the past five years, it’s that the media, the Democratic Senators, the think-tank experts and large numbers of other fast-molting hawks are on board only until the first setback, or the first “atrocity”. As the Belmont Club observes:

If the “good old U.S. military” actually does invade Burma it will incinerate every vestige of armed opposition in its path. Burmese Army units will stand about as much chance as ants before a kid’s homemade flamethrower. And then all of a sudden the assumptions will collapse in reverse order. People are going to say, ‘we didn’t realize invasions meant killing people’; ‘we didn’t realize we wouldn’t have allies’; and finally ‘we did not think it would be so expensive’. And then we will hear that classic line: “I was for it before I was against it.”