AFTER THE QUAKE

I posted a link here to a feature article from the Dec. 19th Opinion Journal commenting on some positive news being reported that in parts of the Middle East there has been a surge of support for the U.S.

Now, Bret Stephens, a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, has followed up with a piece "Chinook Diplomacy: The U.S. military wins hearts and minds in Pakistan." appearing in the Thursday, December 22, 2005 Opinion Journal.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan--From the air, the town of Balakot, at the lip of the Kaghan Valley in Pakistan's mountainous North-West Frontier Province, resembles pictures of Hiroshima circa late summer 1945: All but a few buildings have been reduced absolutely to rubble. There were some 50,000 people in this town on the morning of Oct. 8; a six-second earthquake that day killed an estimated 16,000 outright. Now survivors live mainly in scattered tent villages, not all of them properly winterized. And winter has begun.

The people of Balakot and dozens of other devastated towns are much on the mind of Rear Adm. Michael A. LeFever, 51, the man in charge of the U.S. military's 1,000-man, $110 million-and-counting relief effort here. "I'll never forget landing and smelling gangrene and smelling death," he says of his first trip to the disaster zone where 73,000 died. "The first couple of days were overwhelming."

[snip]

Since then, U.S. helicopters have flown 2,500 sorties, carried 16,000 passengers and delivered nearly 6,000 tons of aid. Just as importantly, the Chinook has become America's new emblem in Pakistan, a byword for salvation in an area where until recently the U.S. was widely and fanatically detested. Toy Chinooks (made in China, of course) are suddenly popular with Pakistani children. A Kashmiri imam who denounced the U.S. in a recent sermon was booed and heckled by worshippers. "Pakistan is not a nation of ingrates," a local businessman told me over dinner the other night. "We know where the help is coming from."

The extent of the U.S. military's assistance, well-known to Pakistanis, barely registers on the radar screens of most Western news outlets.......

[snip]

In less than two months, MASH doctors and nurses have treated some 7,000 patients, performed 330 major surgeries, written 14,000 prescriptions and given nearly 10,000 preventive vaccinations.

Go and read it in it's entirety.