CHARITIES WORKING IN PAKISTAN are seeking to have the stars and stripes removed from the sacks of grain given by America in response to the needs of Pakistan’s flood victims.
In a letter signed by 11 charities including Oxfam, Save the Children and Care International, the signatories believe that their aid workers will be targeted by the Taliban for distributing American aid. They apparently have no evidence for this fear, only prejudice.
The USA receives very little credit for the aid she gives to the unfortunate of the world. So if she stamps the stars and stripes on a sack of grain, then she is perfectly entitled to do so. The charities prefer the world to remain ignorant of America’s contribution, as they blame the superpower for all of the world’s ills.
If America removed her flag from the sacks of aid, it would not make the slightest difference to how the Taliban would react. For the Taliban knows that the primary source of such aid is the West as a whole; and to them the West is the Great Satan, and would consider any attack on aid worker justified, not because of an American flag, but because they know that all such aid originated from the West.
If these charities believe what they are saying, then let them remove their aid workers from Pakistan, and let another solution be found to aid distribution. But America must not succumb to such infantilism by the charities.
All that should matter is that such aid should get to the flood’s victims, and if the charities feel they cannot do this, then let them leave the field; they are not, as they may think, irreplaceable. Some way or another help will get through to those wretched victims of nature.
If the charities feel the need to hit out, then why not hit out at the likes of France and the EU generally. America has given more than the whole of Europe put together, which is probably why so many American flags are in evidence on the sacks of aid.
AMERICA HAS GIVEN aid despite the corruption in Pakistan, which has deterred other countries from giving as generously as they would usually do considering the magnitude of the disaster.
All that this intervention from the amalgam of the Great and Good does, is to convince the cynical that charity does indeed begin at home. These charities have become an industry, replacing coal and steel among our nation’s best employers.
I do not believe for one moment that any aid worker that is targeted by the Taliban for distributing sacks of aid stamped with the flag of America, would have not been targeted had the flag been removed.
I think this whole episode has more to do with the various charities’ antipathy toward America than it has to do with concern for their aid worker’s welfare. As far as the charities are concerned the world would be a better place without America’s role in it; and this is the bottom line.
I AM SURE THAT SUCH A COMMENT, if read, would cause a fit of the vapours amongst the charity’s directors. They would protest that their only concern was for the well being of those who need their help – and if that help is financed and provided by America, what then?
The charity industry in this country has become a player whose currency is exploiting the genuine concerns of the British public. But they must be careful when counting on such good will, not to expose their bigotry against the USA. For there are millions of people in this country who give much support to the nation that gave thousands of its young men’s lives to help us defeat Nazism in Europe.
The charity industry is a vacuous entity reliant upon pure sentiment …that standard bearer of the modern age. All the charities’ rely upon, is nothing less than raw emotion which they bombard frightened politicians with, afraid as they are of popular disapproval.
If America agrees to the signatories wishes, and removes their flag, then I hope the current government will be driven from office by the American electorate come the next presidential election.
This American government has nothing to apologise for and should not kow-tow the wishes of the charity industry, whose only leverage is emotion. They should stand fast and continue to provide the assistance needed by any country that, through a natural disaster, needs it.
It is the charities that have become political, not the aid contributors. It is they, the charities, who are showing where their antipathies’ lay, and they lay in Washington. It is not that they fear Taliban reprisals against their workers, but rather they themselves feel uncomfortable with the sympathetic response that the Great Satan may glean from the product placement on the sacks of grain.
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