Aid or Else

Our Pakistani friends have suffered recently a millennial flood of their own, one which ravaged the already impoverished country, left at least twelve hundred (1200) dead, and a dislocated a stunning number- twenty million (20,000,000). One could say that the flood there is Biblical (or Koranic), perhaps a sign of God's wrath against the country whose own version of the CIA, the ISI created the Taliban, organized al-Qaeda, and contributed more to the world's nuclear proliferation than any other nation through the A.Q. Khan network including helping to initiate the atomic weapons programs in North Korea and Iran (Khan is the scientist who conceived Pakistan's own nuclear weapons program and is considered the father of the "Islamic Bomb"). This country is now imperiled but instead of reaching out the hand for help- threatens. If the world does not fill the void, the Taliban will, we are told, and the man on the street in Pakistan is already disillusioned with the conduct of the civilian government in this crisis, is somewhat grateful to the Pakistani military which has staged several coups over the years to replace flagging civilian authority and has successfully rescued and relocated thousands in the current flooding crisis but once they are saved from immediate danger has little ability to improve conditions for so many flood refugees, and is not impressed by the international assistance that is already arriving including that provided by a thousand helicopter-borne US Marines, which is insufficient according to the locals to meet the dire scope of the flood damage. So instead of pleading for our help, the civilian leaders of Pakistan threaten and extort- come across now or the people will look to the Taliban. A sort of ultimatum is issued, come with your generosity in abundance or the Taliban who seek to wipe out the infidel will have a surge in popularity and membership of their own. They will be the one's bringing bags of rice and saving their coreligionists, earning the eternal gratitude and fealty of those they helped, except for one tiny aspect, the Taliban are in no way equipped or logistically prepared, or even humanitarianly-inclined to reach out with any aid. The Pakistani people are about as hospitable to foreigners as their Saudi Sunni brethren, a society closed and hostile to the other and no amount of the world's help ( including US aid) will change that Wahhab-inspired ethos. With or without outreach from terrorist groups to help the stricken, the Pakistan man on the street will never feel greater loyalty to foreign non-believers than indigenous Muslim brothers. Let the Saudis divert some of the billions they spend in constructing Wahhab fundamentalists mosques the world over including in America to helping those millions made homeless by the Pakistan flood. By demonstrating that they look after their own with their great oil wealth, the Saudis would garner much more favorable feelings in the West than they ever will by building a hundred million ($100,000,000) dollar mosque at New York's Ground Zero.