The Scale of Disaster in Pakistan

As the blogosphere wrangles over the Ground Zero mosque, the current disaster in Pakistan hasn't seemed to get as much coverage. But the sheer scale of the devastation raises all sorts of questions, not only about the future of that country, but about its impact on U.S. policy in the region. Here's Ralph Peters, writing in the New York Post.

Try to grasp that number. Twenty million people, overwhelmingly poor, have lost their homes, their slight "wealth" and their livelihoods. Thousands have died.

And international aid groups estimate that 3.5 million children are at mortal risk from diseases spread by polluted water and poor sanitation. Think cholera, typhoid, dysentery and common diarrhea -- the latter a killer among children in the developing world.

As Peters points out, this makes Hurricane Katrina "look like a thunderstorm." Even the Haitian earthquake, which attracted massive international attention and aid, pales before the scope of this disaster. And unlike Haiti, Pakistan is a nuclear power, home of the strongest branch of the Taliban, and full of millions of people with Islamist sympathies. The U.S. has pumped billions of military aid into the country in an attempt to keep it on-board in the fight in Afghanistan, with mixed results. We are now sending in large amounts of humanitarian aid. But the government, which was already shaky, now appears utterly incompetent to deal with the massive flood. Governments have fallen before because of their inability to respond to disaster. What will happen in Pakistan, and is there anything we can do about it? Peters argues that the Taliban will attempt to exploit the situation.

Islamist extremists will attempt to capitalize on the disaster by 1) providing local aid to the poor; 2) blaming the government for not helping sufficiently; 3) claiming that the deluge was a judgment from Allah for Pakistan's cooperation with the West and for not supporting jihad, and 4) spreading rumors that the US masterminded the flooding to take control of Pakistan and punish Muslims.

This is an extremely volatile situation. Desperate people often do or support things they would never countenance in normal times. And with a fifth of their country underwater, there is incredible desperation in Pakistan.

Actual Killing of Humanitarian Aid Workers Not that Big of a Deal on the Left

Remember the howls of outrage on the left after an Israeli boarding action enforcing the Gaza blockade ended with dead blockade runners? The anti-Israel left and its useful idiots like Andrew Sullivan were screaming about Israel murdering poor humanitarian aid workers -- never mind that the supposed humanitarians were armed with various weapons, apparently pre-planned an ambush, and attacked the Israeli boarding party. Well today, actual humanitarian workers were murdered.

The group — a medical aid team of six Americans, a Briton, a German and four Afghans — had just finished eating when they were accosted by gunmen ... The gunmen marched the aid workers into the forest, stood 10 of them in a straight line, 7 men and 3 women, and shot them.

The Taliban admitted doing it, and claims that they were spies and Christian missionaries. This aid group has been helping the poor in Afghanistan since the 1960s, and plans to continue their efforts despite the massacre.

Amazingly enough, there's little or no outrage to be found on the left from the self-appointed arbiters of right and wrong in the wake of this killing by the Taliban. Instead of filling the entire top half of Memeorandum with their ranting, the story is pretty minor, with only a couple of left-wing blogs even bothering to comment. One of those deplores the killings, but thinks the story is getting too much coverage. The writer even spins a conspiracy theory about how the "western media" is "developing a narrative for staying in Afghanistan," supposedly in conjunction with CIA manipulation. Seriously. And of course he draws false analogies -- a left-wing staple -- with other killings of aid workers that we are apparently supposed to worry about more. Worrying about this one might help the war effort -- and we can't have that.

If this were an accidental killing of aid workers by the U.S. or Israel, or a justified killing of combatants posing as aid workers by the same, the left would be in full fury, hurling condemnations and accusations all over the place. When aid workers from a known, long-serving humanitarian organization unaffiliated with politics or government are murdered by a U.S. enemy, all you can hear is silence.