The Atlantic has a piece up today titled “Burma’s Days,” which is essentially a thumbnail sketch of why the behavior of the military junta that rules Burma (and renamed the country Myanmar nine years ago), deplorable though it may be, makes perfect sense in light of Burmese history and culture. It’s a useful piece for the information in it (and a more useful one yet for the links to other articles), but it’s also an irritating example of the tendency among Western intelligentsia to look for excuses for foreign dictators. People who condemn the Israeli government for breathing will look the other way at Mugabe’s efforts to depopulate Zimbabwe or calmly explain how the Burmese military should be excused for diverting aid from cyclone victims because “they have reason to be suspicious about their neighbors and outside powers.” (And of course, those who wouldn’t make those particular mistakes may yet have a soft spot in their hearts for the corrupt rulers of Saudi Arabia, or be perfectly content with the generals running Pakistan; this is a game both left and right can play, and have.) Why is that?I suppose I can understand the Realpolitik approach that says, essentially, as long as dictators don’t give us any trouble, we should let them run their countries however they want; I don’t like it, and in the long run, I think it’s self-defeating (to borrow from Barack Obama on Pakistan, if we choose to promote stability instead of democracy, we tend to wind up with neither), but at least I can see the logic. But what on earth moves our journalists and public intellectuals to find excuses for these thugs? That, I just don’t get. (As you can see, I go with “Burma” over “Myanmar.” The latter is probably closer, as far as I can tell, to what the Burmese people call themselves—not that we let that bother us with places like Hungary—but I have two related reasons for not using it. One, the name change came from the junta, which is an illegitimate government, and therefore in my opinion is likewise illegitimate; and two, it’s not just my opinion. I had, for several months several moves ago, a landlord who was in exile from Burma due to his activities with the opposition; he called his country Burma and himself Burmese. He knew a lot more than I do, and had a lot more reason to care, so if it was good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.)
