Here Come Those Guys--Again

In this case the "guys" are the government of Pakistan. And, shock of shock, they are coming with hands outstretched and mouths muttering dire warnings of unspecified but horrid things which will most certainly come to pass unless the outstretched hands are speedily filled with billions of dollars.

The cause for the current demand for money is the floods which have wracked the Indus valley with very ill effects for twenty or so million Pakistanis. A second motivation for the escalating cries for largess is the low turnout to date of governments and individuals willing and able to donate to the Pakistani Flood Relief Fund. Other than the US (which has reasons other than the altruistic and eleemosynary,) the UK (which has motives other than the humanitarian) and a few other countries such as Australia and Denmark, there have been few national donors.

The membership of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has been conspicuous by its absence from the UN's list of donor countries. Regional allies such as Iran and China have not shown any particular eagerness to step up and start writing checks.

The Pakistani government is facing a very real, perhaps existential, crisis. The probability of Pakistan joining the ranks of collapsing states went up orders of magnitude as the flood waters washed down the Indus. A certain level of both panic and prevarication on the part of the government is expectable.

But, as has so often been the case in the past, the government figures go too far, way too far in their rhetorical overkill. The centerpiece of the Words From Islamabad has been the explicit threat of "extremism." The narrative reads simply, "Give us money, lots and lots of money, with no questions asked or accountability required, or there will be extremism beyond imagining in the days to come."

Even if there is a measure of truth to this equation, the blunt wording transmogrifies a request for humanitarian and economic aid into one more extortionate threat. While extortion works, particularly on the US, it is a limited tool. And, the Pakistani government is running up against the limits.

It is the realization that the old trick of your-money-or-your-life may be losing its magic which has driven some of the more risible bits of Pakistani official exaggeration. For example, the government trotted out one Salman Ahmad, a popular musician, who averred that Pakistan's one hundred million people under age 25 "feel abandoned by the world."

Get a grip, Salman, the vast majority of those hundred million, particularly the ones who live way up country on the banks of the Indus and the tributaries don't know squat about the "world" and wouldn't have the slightest notion as to whether or not they had been "abandoned by the world." Most of these anti-American, anti-Western, pro-Islamist, pro-Taliban, past or present inmates of madrassas lavishly funded by Saudi Arabia know no more of the world and its doings than permitted to by the imams and other clerics who control their lives.

It will not matter how much aid the US provides. It will not matter how many Pakistanis owe their lives to an American flown helicopter. It will not matter how many Pakistanis survive on MREs which meet the requirements of Islamic law. It will not matter how many Pakistanis recover from injury or disease due to the presence of American medics or medicine. When all is done, when all the money has been spent, when people total up their experiences, no lasting credit will be thrown in the direction of the US.

To put it bluntly, all our efforts, all our money, all our assistance will not buy any friends in Pakistan. Heck, it won't even rent us any. Ten days from now, or ten months, or even ten years hence, Pakistanis will still be overwhelmingly anti-American, anti-Western. Or, of course, there is always the strong possibility they will be even more willing to piss on Uncle Sam's face than they are today.

The role of Islam in the defining of the Pakistani nation and state assures that the US will always be right in there with Israel and India as the "main enemy." Particularly after the dictator Zia established his "Islamization " program with the aid of Saudi clerics and money, the orientation of Pakistanis generally, the views of young Pakistanis in particular, would be antithetical to the values, imperatives, and goals of the US and the rest of the West.

A little bit of money is not going to change that ground truth. The billions of aid haven't altered it in the slightest. The outpouring of aid, both governmental and private, following the Kashmir earthquake didn't erase a jot or tittle of the profound and pervasive anti-American sentiments of the Pakistanis. If Richard Holbrooke, Hillary Clinton, or President Obama really, really believe that more US aid now will alter the reality of the human terrain in Pakistan, they are badly out of touch with the real world.

Admittedly, the amount of cash promised by the US is a mere bagatelle compared to TARP or the "stimulus program," it is nonetheless a matter of tossing the money of the future down the rat hole of today's Pakistan. Best case a little bit of the oodles and gobs of borrowed (or simply created) money will go to some more or less useful purpose after the majority has stuck to the fingers of Pakistani governmental wallahs, the vested interests of the legions of NGOs, the get-a-little-for-yourself crowd at the UN, and hordes of middlemen, contractors, and assorted camp followers of disaster.

This may be a highly pessimistic view of a dystopian environment, but the weight of history is in favor of it. The Obama administration has already sent the money down the tubes; it will be followed by more, a lot more. Maybe something good will result.

Just don't bet the ranch on it.