Guest Post: The Diplomacy of Caring
Charles Cameron is the regular guest-blogger at Zenpundit, and has also posted at Small Wars Journal, All Things Counterterrorism, for the Chicago Boyz Afghanistan 2050 roundtable and elsewhere. Charles read Theology at Christ Church, Oxford, under AE Harvey, and was at one time a Principal Researcher with Boston University’s Center for Millennial Studies and the Senior Analyst with the Arlington Institute:
The Diplomacy of Caring
by Charles Cameron
It’s such a simple thing, a blog post with space for comments. And yet it is also a remarkable opportunity.
The blog post I’m thinking of today was made about three weeks ago by an American helicopter pilot, CWO John Bockmann, who has been flying relief missions in Pakistan as part of the US response to the terrible floods there.
A retired Pakistani officer, Brig. FB Ali, read it on Pakistan’s Express Tribune blog, and quoted from it in a guest post on Col. Pat Lang’s blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis, today. Both are worth reading – but what’s most wonderful, as Brig Ali notes, is the outpouring of love and appreciation in the Comments section, both from individual Pakistanis and from Bockmann’s own family.
Bockmann writes:
I have learned in my time here that Pakistani people are truly gracious. Strangers have invited me for chai and conversation. Almost anyone will shake my hand and ask my name, inquire about my health and how I am getting along. Instead of a handshake at our first meeting, I have sometimes been embraced. “Strangers shake hands,” my new friend Mahmood explained, “but brothers hug each other.” This warms my heart. My mission, our mission, is straightforward, noble, and good. I am deeply grateful to those who support us here, for we need all the help we can get in order to help those in need. I am honored to do this work. I feel at home here beyond anything I could have expected.
and
When I do return home, I will bring with me hundreds of pictures, dozens of journal entries, six duffel bags, and several recipes for local dishes that I have enjoyed, but I will also bring innumerable memories that I will treasure for life — memories of Pakistan and its people. They have surprised me with friendship. I hope that through our work of compassion we may surprise them with friendship as well.
I will let the comments of Abdullah and Mustafa stand for the many that were posted by Pakistanis in response:
God bless you and may you return home safe and sound . There is a lot in common and a lot to share between common people not only living in U.S and Pakistan but also between people living all over the world. — Abdullah
and:
John, I’d like to personally thank you for your efforts and for giving your time for this cause. May Allah reward you and bless your family. — Mustafa
Others wrote longer and more effusive comments, but in their simplicity those two capture the spirit of the whole.
And then John’s mother, deeply moved by the love shown her son by these people from a far-off country, wrote her own comment — which strikes closer to the heart than the best of diplomats easily can:
Thus shall it be between Christians and Muslims, your country and mine: despite the heartbreaking fractures, we shall become strong in all the weak places, and no government policies, no misguided violent people shall prevent it, because God wills it, whether we call him Allah or Jehovah, and we will it, with all our hearts. We shall support each other while respecting our differences.
I’m with FB Ali on this, and Pat Lang, and John Bockmann and his family, and all the many Pakistanis who responded. More recently, John Bockmann wrote this comment on the whole exchange:
Amazing. I know the hearts of many Pakistanis now, but I am still surprised by their outpouring of warmth — especially in such hard times. I read all of the comments — the stories, the blessings, the frustrations — and I am increasingly convinced that international relations are effected more by common people like you and me than by politicians who may never get a chance to have tea and real conversation with “the other side”. I am so privileged to be so well loved while I am so far from home. God’s blessings on Pakistan and her people.
If you want to see Bockmann, Cpl. Jenie Fisher interviewed him earlier in the mission, and you can find those videos here. I hope she does a follow-up. I hope the press picks up on this. This is what’s best in our common humanity — hearts and minds – they’re not won, they open. And this is what’s best about the internet — this possibility. I’ll close with the words of Engineer Syed, who writes:
Ten people like the pilot who is in the picture in worlds each decision making cabinet-agency-organization etc can change the total scenario of the world
October 19th, 2010 at 3:31 am
Hi Charles,
.
Excellent post.
.
Speaking as someone who has essentially written off Pakistan during the past year due to the actions of it’s behind the scense rulers, hard men with guns all, it was refreshing to see a genuine appeal to "the better angels of our nature".
October 19th, 2010 at 11:56 am
"we shall become strong in all the weak places" is one powerful phrase.You remind me of Wright’s NonZero idea, Charles, about the largest historical arc being increased human interconnection.
October 20th, 2010 at 12:17 am
This is a fantastic post Charles. It may be anecdotal but disaster relief appears to be one of the missions our military enjoys the most because they are able to be enormous supporters of a noble effort that shares our the capabilities our great nation has accumulated over the years with those who have lost everything (I heard this repeatedly from shipmates on the Abe Lincoln who served during the tsunami relief and from Marines who assisted the earthquake relief effort in Pakistan).
October 20th, 2010 at 12:03 pm
Allow me to appeal to the worse angels of our nature…Is there a more perishable emotion in foreign affairs than gratitude? I would be interested in seeing some sort of study on whether our HA/DR operations lead to even medium term increases in American approval ratings (probably not that great a proxy for "advancing our national interests," but not a terrible one either). I suspect that the Pakistanis in that article will be sending just as many sons off to study in anti-American madrassas in 10 years as they did a year ago.Maybe I’m just being grumpy. It is probably not a terrible expenditure of resources, even if the national interest gets very little return.
October 20th, 2010 at 5:56 pm
I guess that one of the neatest things about being human is having two shoulders, with an angel on one and a demon on the other. Or having both head and heart. Or, as Hakuin, one of the great Zen masters put it, having both "dai-shinkon" (great faith) and "dai-gidan" (great doubt).
October 25th, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Charles, I’m sure you’re familiar with Jeremy Rifkin’s Empathic Civilization.
In case you haven’t seen this nifty little YouTube on that topic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g&feature=player_embedded
The Compassionate Instinct:
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_compassionate_instinct/
Thank you for your post!
Maggie
October 31st, 2010 at 11:27 pm
Chris, a huge role in increased enrollement for Madrassa’s is played by drone strikes in Pakistan. A recent article by Johann Hari in The independent gives an eye-opening picture of the negative fallout of this policy.
Excerpt: " The Predators and Reapers are being sent [to North-Western areas of Pakistan] by Barack Obama’s CIA, with the support of other Western governments, and they killed more than 700 civilians in 2009 alone – 14 times the number killed in the 7/7 attacks in London. The floods were seen as an opportunity to increase the attacks, and last month saw the largest number of robot-plane bombings ever: 22. Over the next decade, spending on drones is set to increase by 700 per cent…David Kilcullen is a counter-insurgency expert who worked for General Petraeus in Iraq and now advises the State Department. He has shown that two per cent of the people killed by the robot-planes in Pakistan are jihadis. The remaining 98 per cent are as innocent as the victims of 9/11. He says: "It’s not moral." And it gets worse: "Every one of these dead non-combatants represents an alienated family, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially as drone strikes have increased."
Not much chance of increasing approval ratings for the US unless some of the policies are re-evaluated and changed, in my humble opinion.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann–hari-obamas-robot-wars-endanger-us-all-2106931.html
November 2nd, 2010 at 12:22 am
I don’t necessarily disagree with you, Tahera. A curing with one hand, killing with the other approach is probably counterproductive with all types of audiences, whether pre-disposed to like you, hate you, or the neutrals.That said, the article lists some very positive reactions from those helped by the American HA/DR effort. Presumably, those people have no relatives killed by drones, or their reactions would probably be different. Nevertheless, I posit that within a short period of time (even absent a drone strike in the area, which would certainly cause an understandable change), those positive feelings will dissipate. The inhabitants will read that a pastor somewhere in America is pondering whether he’ll burn the Koran, or that a Danish cartoonist drew a picture, and another son will head off to a madrassa. I don’t think HA/DR operations do much if anything for the national interest. I think whatever utility they have is mostly for training purposes, logisticians delivering food, etc.
November 5th, 2010 at 11:24 pm
I’m not sure why you would think the default position for Pakistanis is to hate America or Americans, Chris. Also, the comparison of the impact of hearing about the burning of Quran or a new Cartoon to that of facing an unending cycle of death of beloved family members and knowing you might be next is probably not a very reasonable one. The two situations couldn’t be more dissimilar.
As far as the religious sensitivities are concerned, the Pastor was a nobody turned into a giant by the media, is all. No one would’ve cared for his silly games but for the hype created weeks in advance. The Cartoon controversy owes itself to the same. The Cartoons published in the Danish paper are nothing compared to some of the other images of the Prophet found on the internet. Most Pakistanis were quick to dismiss the Danish cartoonists as one would do a very rude child, "whoever insults others only demeans himself." Many were deeply offended, but were equally against violence of any form.
I personally think, since religion is such a sensitive issue, deliberate incitement is considered an easy way to some cheap, quick publicity these days. Pakistanis or Muslims are not all uncivilised, unreasonable people; they do not always overreact, are not bent upon finding ways to hurt the perceived ‘wicked west’, and there is a fair chance some of their grievances are genuine.
How many people were killed by angry Muslims in the aftermath of either the Cartoon controversy or the Quran burning? Not 900 per year, I’m sure.