The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of Us Warfare by James F. Dunnigan
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Dirty Little Secrets
Making Sure No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
by James Dunnigan
December 8, 2005
Discussion Board on this DLS topic
Islamic radicals, and their supporters
in the media, are waiting for an opportunity to avoid a PR disaster in
earthquake ravaged northern Pakistan. Over three million people were
made homeless by the disaster, and over 100,000 were seriously injured.
Nearly 80,000 died. For Islamic radicals, the real nightmare began
after the quakes, when they not only found many of their terrorist
training camps wrecked, but the area was flooded with infidel
(non-Moslem) relief workers. At first, the Islamic radicals tried to
cajole, then threaten locals to refuse help from the infidels. But the
locals were desperate, and the infidels had much more assistance
available than the more acceptable (to the armed and increasingly
dismayed, Islamic radicals) Islamic charities.
This is all a
replay of what happened earlier in 2005, when the earthquake off
Indonesia, and tidal waves generated by it, killed over 100,000 people
in western Indonesia’s Aceh province. This was a place long noted for
Islamic conservatism. But most of the aid that showed up was from
infidels. Even the U.S. Navy soon arrived, with supplies and huge
helicopters. The Islamic radicals in Aceh took a beating in the PR
department. Years of painting foreign infidels as devils, gone in a few
weeks.
But in Pakistan, the Islamic radicals see some hope in
the coming Winter. Aceh was in the tropics, northern Pakistan is in the
highest mountains in the world, with brutal Winters. The homeless are
in danger of dying in large numbers from cold, hunger and disease. With
a little cooperation from the media, this disaster can be blamed on the
Western relief effort. One can get away with insisting that if the
Western relief organizations had “done more,” then people in northern
Pakistan would not be dying in large numbers from the cold weather.
This is the kind of story that media will jump on after a disaster
anywhere, so there’s no reason why it won’t work in northern Pakistan.
In the Moslem media, an additional, religious, angle will be used,
accusing the Western countries of intentionally screwing up the relief
effort in order to kill Moslems. Naturally, some of the Western media
will try to counter this, pointing out the large number of Western
relief workers in the area and the extent of their relief operations.
The Pakistani government will be under much pressure to agree with the
Moslem media, even though the senior people know full well the extent
of the Western relief operations and realize that without it, many more
Pakistanis would have died. In Pakistan itself, the media spends most
of its time bashing the Pakistani government for not doing enough, but
the international Moslem media will play that down, so as not to make
all Moslem governments look bad.
The Islamic radicals will
be making a maximum effort to turn around their fortunes. However, in
northern Pakistan, the people will know the truth, that the Western
relief efforts are saving lives. But some people can be found, that
journalists got to, but relief efforts did not, who will provide
eyewitness reports of the crimes being committed by the false Western
relief efforts in northern Pakistan, and the damage being done to
desperate Moslem victims of the earthquake. The local Islamic radicals
will embrace this version of events, and insist that “all good Moslems”
do so as well. If this works, it will be an other example of “no good
deed goes unpunished”, and the reasons why.
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