God and Myanmar

As we ponder Robert Araujo's question about the reponsibility to protect, I have another question.  I just read a blog post of a friend of mine recounting a comment from a coworker to the effect that the cyclone that hit Myanmar was God "cleaning things out over there."  What is it that prompts people to regard disaster or disease as God's punishment for being bad?  We heard some people say it about the tsunami.  We heard some people say it about 9/11.  And, if you remember back to the early days of the AIDs epedemic, there was no shortage of people proclaiming that AIDS was God's way of punishing homosexuals.  It all seems so inconsistent with my understanding of the God who loved us first and unconditionally (the subject of a blog post I coincidentally made earlier today) that I just don't get it.