Bush's supreme hypocrisy (Part 345)

The US president, George Bush, today announced new sanctions against Burma amid threats by the country's military regime to crack down on anti-government protesters.

Addressing the UN general assembly in New York, Mr Bush urged its members to join the US in employing "diplomatic leverage to help the Burmese people regain their freedom".

He said the US would tighten economic sanctions on leaders of Burma's military junta and its financial backers, imposing visa bans on those responsible for human rights breaches and their families. (1)

In translation, that says "We've been quite happy to do business with them up till now, but the connection is a bit embarrassing now." Just another example of the massive, corrupt hypocrisy of US politicains (and others, of course, but the political oligarchs of the USA are remarkable in their venality). The Reagan White House killed off the Prevention of Genocide Act, which would have imposed Sanctions on Iraq, post-Halabja. Apparently, Reagan and his acolytes thought action a regime that had just slaughtered 5,000 civilians with poison gas might be premature.' (2)

The article continues:

Mr Bush said Americans were "outraged" by the military junta's "19-year reign of
fear". (2)

This begs the question why the USA has only thought to do something about it now. Bush I & II and the usurper who came inbetween had every opportunity to do something before now.

He accused the regime of a range of abuses including the persecution of ethnic
minorities, forced child labour, human trafficking and the detention of "more
than 1,000 political prisoners". (3)

Wait a minute, this sounds familiar. Isn't this rather like our valued trading partner and soon-to-be Olympic hosts in the PRC? Still, Burma isn't quite as important as the PRC, so Bush can make some noise about how terribly wicked the Burmese junta is, as it won't hurt the USA in the pocket.

1 - "Bush announces new sanctions against Burma," by Haroon Siddique in The Guardian, 25th of September, 2007. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/burma/story/0,,2176876,00.html)
2- "One Man's Battle to Stop Iraq," unattributed CBC article/transcript. (http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/kurds/battle.html)
3 -Siddique, op. cit.
4 - ibid.