Pakistan on Ten Dollars a Day

Back in 1976, I was flying from Bangkok to North Carolina to attend a drug trial. As we flew the European route, our plane briefly stopped in New Delhi and Karachi. Since I had never been in India before, I took advantage of the stopover to get off the plane and wander around the Delhi transit "lounge" and perhaps buy a souvenir. The transit lounge turned out to be a small room with no souvenirs, no snacks and no drinks, nothing-just a hundred or so other international passengers waiting to get on a plane out of India. Then our departure was delayed an hour or so. And there I was stuck in that dirty little transit lounge. Some French passengers had been there for hours and at one point, A French lady-just informed of another delay in her flight back to Gay Paree, went hysterical and ran around the room looking for a non-existent exit screaming and ripping off her shirt in rage. "I want to get out of here," she screamed. Finally, I got the Hell out of there and got back on my flight as we took off for gay Karachi. Minutes later, I realized I was coming down with some sort of sickness. When we got to Karachi for a refueling, I decided to pass on the souvenirs and stay on the plane so's I could enjoy the "view" from my window seat. To this day, I consider it the smartest decision I ever made in my life.

About 20 years later, I returned to Delhi as part of a DEA training team. During my stay, I visited the American Embassy and met a DEA family stationed in Islamabad who were visiting India for R&R.

R&R!!! What does that tell you about Pakistan?

Shortly thereafter, a group of DEA agents stationed in Karachi drove around town and filmed the street scenes, which they turned into a mini-video. Patterned after Dragnet, the narration began,

"This is the city. Karachi, Pakistan..." You can tell which direction the video went. I don't need to go into detail.


All this comes rushing back to me as I recall all the events coming out of Pakistan over the years, over the decades and over the past half century since Pakistan was formed. Terrorism, assassinations, Taliban, Al-Qaida, corruption, the sacking of the embassy in Islamabad, Daniel Pearl etc.

Last month, Hillary Clinton announced that the US is tripling its non-military aid to Pakistan, which I dutifully reported. After all, it's only the tax-payers' money, and we have 300 million people in the US-I guess about 150 million of whom pay taxes, so there's plenty to go around, right?

Now come the floods in Pakistan, and as always when you have a nation with so much corruption and so little infrastructure, the losses in terms of life and property are catastrophic. As always, the US is there with food, medicine, helicopters, you name it, while the UN holds meetings and the rest of the world sips its latte. I don't begrudge that; it is what makes us the greatest country in the world and the most generous people in the world-even as the rest of the world spits on us.

Now comes the report that Hillary is urging Americans to dig a little deeper into their pockets and contribute money to Pakistan relief efforts, which we will do. Yet, this woman, who just spent millions on her daughter's elaborate wedding at some palatial estate in New York, has chipped in the grand total of........







Ten bucks!!! (Plus a few pairs of her husband's used skivvies undoubtedly). I figure, my share will be more than ten bucks just in taxes.



Well, if we can save lives and help rebuild homes, what the Hell; I'm all for it. However, wouldn't it be nice if we would no longer have to witness these scenes from a grateful Pakistan?




Thank God I stayed on that plane back in 1976.