It’s clear that the world is absorbing a set of incredibly devastating natural disasters — the tsunami in Southeast Asia, the massive earthquake in December 2004 and December 2003 in Iran, the recent mudslides in Guatemala, the hurricanes in the Gulf (which pale in terms of lives lost but are on scale with general infrastructure destruction), and now the massive quake in Pakistan/Kashmir.
America has committed $50 million. This is a world to which Americans must reconnect. Many muslims in the world are ambivalent about us — and as one scholar told me recently, muslims don’t believe that we value them as people and value their lives.
These quakes that have created such devastation in Kashmir, Pakistan and India — are tragic — and America should send as much of its machinery of support there to do something real for these people.
— Steve Clemons
