Penance for Pakistan

Penance for Pakistan
January 16, 2006

Now, at this time, when large crowds of Pakistanis are marching in the streets of their cities shouting “Death to America,”[1] it may be a good time to reflect on the past three months of our relationship with our global neighbor.

This evening’s news reports that the ruling party of Pakistan is demanding an apology for our actions, killing 17 citizens, as we allege intelligence that a top al-Qaida official would be visiting there. Guess who didn’t show up for dinner. It has a too-familiar ring with our ‘mistakes’ of recent years.

I disagree with the assertion I heard in class today that were the suspected terrorist present and killed, “The news headlines would read very differently.” In this I recall the Israeli airstrike that killed not only Hamas leader Sheikh Salah Shehada, but 11 other civilians as well as it flattened a crowded apartment block, including seven children. 120 neighbors were wounded. Although the man was an accused terrorist, the headlines were not jubilant. Too many innocents had suffered for jubilation. Eleven, seventeen, what is our mathematical equation for acceptable collateral damage?

Pakistan, within the region, is considered a place of relative stability. Perhaps millions of refugees from neighboring conflicts are filling its communities. I can only imagine the fear of people in a country that believes itself not to be at war, only to have an unmanned aircraft fly above its sovereign airspace and fire a powerful weapon into the midst of unsuspecting villagers. Perhaps it is something that we felt not so many years ago when fire and debris rained from our skies and our perceptions of personal security were shattered.

Looking back further, do you remember the terrible earthquake which this country suffered only a few short months ago? Perhaps we missed it in the wake of tsunami, Katrina, and Rita. Even NPR coverage was not nearly so thorough as that of the Gulf Coast hurricanes. And yet, as of this writing at least 73,000 people are dead, and three million without shelter from the bitterly cold winter. More will die. Many tents supplied cannot keep out the weather, stand under the heavy snowfalls, or accommodate heating fires. Do you remember the pleading of the aid agencies for anyone, everyone to donate, to stave off certain additional mass deaths? Do you remember our response? Only half of the $546 million needed has materialized. Much is in loans. How can they repay?

Another quake of 5.2 struck the same region on Christmas Day. There is no news on how the fragile tents and their occupants withstood the trauma.

There are many reasons to ignore a country until it publicly denounces us in its streets. We do ourselves no favors with Sen. McCain asserting our right to bomb wherever we please in our global war. Or with apologies absent from the White House. Perhaps we are overburdened, experiencing ‘compassion fatigue?’ Or perhaps it seems that for people in those countries, large scale tragic death tolls are too regular an occurrence for us to be made too uncomfortable. Or perhaps it is because they don’t look like us and do not practice our religion, and we feel unable to ‘relate.’

I thought sarcastically several weeks ago that perhaps we could start a fundraising drive called ‘Pennies for Pakistan,’ a name which would voice our negligence over letting such a disaster fall through the cracks of our collective conscience.

So how do we make things right between ourselves and Pakistan? An apology somehow doesn’t seem enough—not for our bombing, and not for our paltry response in their time of great need. I think a renewed effort toward helping the country rebuild is most certainly in order. We might wish to call such fundraising efforts our ‘Penance for Pakistan.’

To do nothing seems so frightening. Surely with our State Department beating the drums of war against Iran, and possibly Syria, we do not need to enmesh ourselves in yet another battle. Especially not one with a country that, if even only for its sheer catastrophes faced, likely stands on higher moral ground.

How you can help: Learn more and donate!
www.mercycorps.org
www.oxfam.org
www.lwr.org (Lutheran World Relief)

Volunteer to rebuild? (Dress warm, though): http://www.bitsonline.net/earthquake/
Read a story from a Wartburg College student:
http://public.wartburg.edu/trumpet/2006/jan16/pakistan.html

[1] “Morning Edition,” NPR, January 16, 2006