Mark it Down

There are currently 20 million Pakistanis who are affected by the flooding that has turned Pakistan's Punjab province into a wet and muddy deathtrap the last two weeks. Cholera is starting to break out, as lack of sanitation turns what was previously "only" a dysentery outbreak that followed the natural disaster into a real public health emergency for the survivors. Tens of thousands are already dead, hundreds of thousands more will probably die soon enough. And the Pakistani government, through its structure of having politically-powerful military and a politically-weak civillian government, has left itself in the position of being completely unable to help.

India is Pakistan's largest and most powerful neighbor, by far. But Pakistan's military would refuse aid from India, no matter how well meaning or who delivers it - blame the nonsense in Kashmir (and the three previous wars these two countries have fought) for that.

The US can't deliver aid, because the public knows we prop up the Pakistani government which has, up until now, done jack squat. So any aid we'd send would have to go through the...well, the completely impotent Pakistani government.

Chances are good that Iran would love to send aid in order to make us look bad, but might not be able to because of the Sunni - Shia divide.

The only - ONLY - country which could help at this point is probably China. But any aid they send would have to pass through India, which is engaged in a quiet cold war with the Chinese, and so would demand the right to transport it themselves, leading to the aforementioned problems.

Truthfully, there is no help here for the 20 million Pakistanis affected by this flooding. And the end result may very well be the collapse of the Pakistani government - and another terrorist hotbed of people who hate America.