The "big news" out of the Wikileaks controversy recently (whereby the website released 92,000 classified documents to the press about the Afghan war from 2004-09) was the role of Pakistan in the chaos. Well, there was a bigger story, namely how the war was in itself becoming a more obvious nightmare, but the American mainstream press opted to cover the "shocking" news that the Pakistan intelligence agency (the ISI) was supporting the Taliban and the counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, even though Pakistan gets a lot of (military) aid from the U.S. The episode shows just how much Pakistan is America's whipping boy in all of this mess. Not surprisingly, the horrible flooding tragedy that has left one-fifth of Pakistan underwater as of right now is not getting much media attention in the U.S., and sorely-needed donations are lagging badly behind. As the BBC asked, who cares about Pakistan? The U.S. perception of Pakistan as a terrorist wonderland (which is problematic as it is) might be a major reason America has dropped the ball on this one (unlike Britain, which has done much more). Click here for ways to help the relief effort.
