Plus

Plus

TIMES POSTCARD
The hearts that quake for Pakistani kids
By Rajpal Abeynayake
It's not a good sight; Pakistani children freezing in sub zero temperatures in the earthquake hit parts of that country. Some are suffering from serious infections but there is no medicine due to inaccessibility.

Didn't deter the US government if you ask me.They sent a missile to Pakistan recently, which killed 18 people and injured many. What were they thinking in the White House? Pakistan is Pakistan — we might be able to take at least 18 people out and end their suffering?

They say the terrain is tough where the earthquake happened, but, Pakistan has always been a friend of the United States. General Musharraf lent his country for the US to launch attacks on Afghanistan, and Pakistan almost ended up earning the wrath of the Muslims all over the world.

But, now we see children and entire families freeing in the cold, in tents. It's almost worse than famines seen in Somalia — these are sub zero temperatures. Couldn't the Pakistani government evacuate these communities, uproot them entirely for the duration of the winter?

They evacuated entire cities before hurricane Katrina, and even though that particular evacuation will not be remembered for tremendous success, there were successful mass evacuations after that.

Instead of an evacuation plan, the US has sent bombs to Pakistan. It can be argued that the bombs have been honed in on a different location, and have been sent for a different purpose.

But, this is moral America. This is the compassionate conservative America of George W Bush,. What does he say when he sees the heart wrenching media coverage of people freezing and near to death — almost — in earthquake-hit Pakistan?

It was God's plan? God proposeth, Bush diposeth? Nature may have bombed, but I have bombed too? Can we buy the contention that the US cannot do much better about the predicament of one of its primary allies in the war against terror, Pakistan??

Does the world have a moral leg to stand on — the entire rest of the world including the United Nations, to have footage beamed of entire communities shivering in sub-zero temperatures splashed on global television??
Mass evacuation is a difficult task no doubt — but did anyone at the least moot the idea? What was discussed in the situation room except dispatching bombs to another part of the country?

Former U.S secretary of state Madeleine Albright should have been asked, maybe. When U.S sanctions were killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children literally, Albright said “it’s worth the price”. When US Republican Senator John McCain was asked recently about the US attacks which killed innocent civilians and did not get the Al Quaeda quarry that was sought — he replied in the same vein. He said “the attacks were necessary despite the injury to the civilians”.

It's a cold hard world literally for earthquake victims. There was no tsunami like sympathy for them either — the tsunami was on the warm beaches, and besides, scores of white tourists were killed in the tsunami, thousands in fact in Thailand.

That made the tsunami a special attack of nature. Cold winters in Pakistan which are freezing Pakistani children and denying them access to medicine — bah, that's natures humbug. The tsunami was the real thing — because it dared to take bikinis off the bottoms of white derriere.

Back to Plus