[Buddha-l] Re: buddha-l Digest, Vol 32, Issue 17

[Richard Hayes]

On Fri, 2007-10-19 at 08:43 +0200, Joy Vriens wrote:

> Sure, but what psychology would you suggest we use on the generals of
> the Birmese junta?

I have no idea. I see Myanmaa/Burma as a tragically broken country that
probably cannot be fixed by any sensible intervention from within or
without. Like Iraq, except to a much grater degree, it is an area filled
with a multiplicity of ethnic and religious groups that have hated each
other for centuries, and most of which would gladly begin a campaign of
forming independent countries and then conducing "ethnic cleansing" to
get rid of all people who had married outside the in-group. When given
independence by the British, Burma immediately got busy with one of the
bloodiest spates of civil unrest in Asia. It is hard to imagine anything
less forceful than a military government keeping order in the place. If
the main supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi (the many ethnic minorities and
the opium warlords) got their way, the probably result would be a return
of the kind of violence seen in the 1950s. Here is a situation in which
it makes no sense at all to take any of the available sides, whether the
junta or the swaggering cheroot-smoking monks who have, until very
recently, been among the few who have thrived under the junta. Not so
long ago, all universities in Myanmaa were closed, except the Buddhist
universities. So the Buddhists hardly have clean hands in that place.
Any foreign policy with respect to Myanmaa is bound to be deeply
unsatisfactory. 

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico