Stop kidding us about Burma

Dear Gordon Brown,

Your soft and comforting words in today’s Guardian are worthless, I’m afraid.  Your failure to act decisively in Burma led to the deaths of huge numbers of innocent protesters, and here you are trying to make out that you are fighting the military regime.

Bearing in mind you are Prime Minister, you are still shockingly naive when it comes to international politics.  In your article today you talk about how the UN Security Council is right behind the work of their Special Envoy, and how the EU is imposing even tougher sanctions on Burma.  Are you so removed from reality that you think this will stop the regime from continuing on their previous course?  Unbelievable.  If the best the UN can muster is a single individual being sent to have a chat with the military leaders and say how unhappy we all are, I doubt they will be quaking in their boots.  And why do you think sanctions will help?  As was proved quite conclusively in Iraq, sanctions hit the people you are trying to protect hardest of all - the government goes relatively unscathed.

I’d like to think you cared about the Burmese people, bearing in mind they are being tortured, abused, detained and murdered - especially when the Labour Party used precisely these justifications to invade Iraq.  I’ve said all along that your tough words were no consolation to the Burmese people, and tragically I was right.

Yours in disgust,

A.Tory