I've said it before: the really interesting politics are never about good versus evil. That's easy. Nearly everybody's for good, and against evil, so it tends to be really easy to unite people. No, when politics gets really interesting is when it's about good versus good: when we have to choose between two incompatible good things, or when we can't currently afford both good things on a list and have to choose one for now. Well, where politics gets not merely interesting, but grimly interesting, not merely grimly interesting, but really tough is when it's about evil versus evil: when no matter what choice we make, something truly awful is going to happen, and it's going to be our fault either way, and what remains is to decide which of the two evils is the lesser.

I've been thinking a lot about the Myanmar cyclone damage, wondering which of two truly monstrous evils the world community was going to settle on. Because the wind had barely stopped blowing before we knew two things. We knew that the military government of Myanmar just plain doesn't have the airlift capability to get enough food, water, and medicine to the people in the hardest-hit coastal areas, even if they had it; that to save literally tens of thousands of innocent lives, they were going to need help. And we also knew, again before the wind even stopped blowing, that the ruling junta had flatly ruled out accepting any such help. By day two, we saw clearly why. No ambiguity, no conspiracy theory, no doubt; it ran on Myanmar's own official government TV stations. The junta is confiscating all aid that enters the country, relabeling it in the name of the ruling generals and their close friends, and only delivering it to their political supporters -- even to political supporters that weren't affected by the cyclone. Which leaves the world's humanitarian aid community, both governments and non-governmental organizations, to do some very, very ugly math.

If we do absolutely nothing, then at least 40,000 people will die of hunger, thirst, and infectious disease. And it will be partly our fault, for having decided it was better to let them all die than to help the junta punish its internal opposition, real or suspected.

If we deliver the aid to the ruling junta, probably at least half of those people will still die of hunger, thirst, and infectious disease, 20,000 or more ... and it will be partly our fault, because we will have helped out those who chose the slain, and because we will have directly funded the junta with the half of the aid that they confiscate and keep for themselves and their supporters.

And there really isn't a third option. It's a mark of how desperate everybody is not to make this choice that some diplomats and reporters have actually floated a trial balloon: what if we send the Marine Corps in to seize and hold a beachhead, then send in the Seabees to build a temporary port and landing strip for the aid workers? Or to evacuate the dying? But it's a fantasy solution; aside from the fact that the US military is kind of busy right now, fighting two land wars in Asia already, it'd be flatly illegal. Nor is it a given that the people who need the aid wouldn't join the junta in rising up against us; it's not as if we have any credibility left on the subject of invading countries for their own good. Nor are the American people going to put up with even a half-serious suggestion that we risk American soldiers' lives for tiny little Myanmar.

So all we can do, all we could do, was threaten to withhold the aid while trying to persuade Myanmar's few remaining allies, notably China, to try to talk them into accepting international assistance, or more to the point, into letting people receive aid without the generals getting personal credit and without first checking their names against a list of possible pro-democracy subversives. Since the junta knows full well that the US government, like nearly every government in the world except for China's, would really like to aid pro-democracy subversives in Myanmar, there was never any serious chance they were going to give in. They can let 40,000 or 50,000 people die without losing a night of sleep, and would rather do so than let opponents of the regime, foreign or domestic, claim any credit for doing anything good in Myanmar. So they just kept us reminded, day after day, how many people were dying, how many more people were going to die, leaving it to us to decide which of two monstrous evils we were going to pick.

Over the weekend, one by one, all of the world's governments and NGOs started shipping food directly to the junta.

It makes my teeth itch, sure, to prop up a military dictatorship. But to be fair, they're no worse a dictatorship than probably 40 or 50 other countries' rulers, nor are they the only military junta we're supporting, at least a couple of which are way worse than Myanmar. (Half of "Stan-istan" comes to mind.) And either way, we were basically screwed, let alone the tens of thousands who are going to die no matter which choice we made. So however I feel about it, I'm hesitant to second-guess anybody's decision, in either direction; I'm far from sure how I'd decide, if the mess landed in my lap as anything other than a theoretical problem. But as a theoretical problem, it is an interesting one, isn't it? Grimly interesting. And a genuinely tough call.