As the former ambassador points out, the US authorization for funds for the Burmese rebels is little more than symbolic. It's a long road to actually receiving the funds.
As a whole I agree with his opinions. But he ignores the elephant in the room: the American Deep State.
Until World War II, the US didn't even have a foreign intelligence service. Britain had MI-5, the "MI" standing for "Military Intelligence", to handle domestic intelligence, similar to the American FBI. And Britain had MI-6, to handle foreign intelligence.
During the war, the US set up its own OSS. Compared to British intelligence, these were a bunch of amateurs. A few years after WW II Britain designed for America a professional foreign military intelligence organization, the CIA, which exists today.
In 1961, American President Eisenhower warned of an American Military-Industrial Complex taking over America. Popular commentary has deemed this to be referring to a group of companies who profit from manufacturing weapons for war. I believe that the "Military-Industrial" is referencing the British MI-5 and MI-6, with the British "MI" standing for "Military Intelligence". In other words, Eisenhower was really warning about the Deep State.
Regardless of the acronyms, an American Deep State has formed, with the CIA at its head. To this day, the CIA has refused to follow the law and release all that it knows about the assassination of American President JFK in 1963. That has to tell you something. Who do you think killed him? At the time, the American Mafia was accepting murder contracts from the CIA. So who did it? The CIA, FBI, and Mafia have all been coordinating as one big happy family under the leadership of the CIA.
How does this affect Myanmar? I think that US Congress genuinely wants to see money go to resistance groups in Myanmar. But Congress is most decidedly the very junior partner of the Deep State. The funds authorized for Myanmar? They will go into a slush fund for the CIA. I would expect some of this money to actually reach Myanmar. The audits that Scot Marcel speaks of? The CIA is excellent at keeping sets of books to cope with these.