Reticent generals

Jesus! No, I don't mean by that to offend anyone's religious sensibilities. I'm merely referring to the figure whose name is invoked in this rank piece of apologetics by the Reverend John Bell on the BBC's Thought for the Day. You can listen to what he has to say here.

I'm not an apologist for the cabal of generals who rule Myanmar... but should we be surprised if the leaders of a country which Western governments have accorded pariah status are reticent to defer to our wishes?

That's what they are, reticent. And it's 'our wishes', rather than a will to help people in distress. Bell says it again later:

[Our] cultural ignorance [as displayed in Iraq] may explain why the Burmese generals, even if they do not speak for the majority of citizens, feel more reticent about welcoming unknown Western experts than they are about receiving the aid supplies now trickling into the country.

He's not an apologist, but he accentuates reticence over other possible motives that could be at work with the Burmese generals - such as a worry about opening the country to influences of an unsettling kind. Then comes Jesus. This is in a concluding reference by Bell to the 'untidy way' in which Jesus responded to need. 'Suffering,' Bell says, 'whether in the body or the body politic, is always a mystery.' Perhaps we should be sending that message in multiple copies to the people who have been stricken by Cyclone Nargis. (Thanks: SdeW.)