food drop

[low_delta]

From MSNBC/Newsweek:

Food, medicine and supplies were dropped into Afghanistan, mainly in areas where thousands of refugees have fled in anticipation of the attacks. C-17s flying at about 30,000 feet tossed out 37,500 daily rations across the country. Each ration was a thick yellow plastic packet reading, in English, humanitarian daily rations, food gift from the people of the United States of America. Each contained beans, potatoes, biscuits, shortbread, strawberry jam, peanut butter, a fruit bar and pastries, along with yellow book matches stamped USA on the cover. Bush, in his televised speech from the White House Treaty Room, was plain-spoken about the purpose of the tactic. The United States of America is friend to the Afghan people, and at the same time is a friend to more than a billion Muslims worldwide, he said.

Good job. Write it in English. Way to make them think we care. And that much aid will feed 1200 people for one month. How many millions of people need to be fed until... when? They tossed them from 30,000 feet, across the county? I wonder what percentage of that food will be found.


"We knew it was coming but I guess we were still hoping it wouldn't," said a vegetable dealer, closing up his stand.

Yeah, us too.

Comments

[seamusd.livejournal.com]

"beans, potatoes, biscuits, shortbread, strawberry jam, peanut butter, a fruit bar and pastries"

Not staples of a typical central Asian diet. While our intentions are good, they are quite cancelled out but the "other things" the planes are dropping. Don't look now, but our arrogance is showing.

[cynnerth.livejournal.com]

Boy, you said it!!! How embarrassing!

[ex-wing191.livejournal.com]

I wonder how many vienna sausages you can buy for the price of a tomahawk missle.

[banana.livejournal.com]

> How many millions of people need to be fed...
According to an advert from Oxfam (a UK charity) today, 5.5m people in Afghanistan. Even supposing they've overestimated badly, that's millions of people facing starvation.

[sherahi.livejournal.com]

There is additional ground aid. The 42 million bucks worth of rice and more basic foods which was promised before all this happened, (And solely from the US, who was, before this, the number one source of aid to the country,) is still being delivered by truck around border areas where most refuges are.

They won't be going through the 'normal' means, since the Taliban took over control and moved about 16 million bucks worth of rice piles from the former distribution center. Remember that news article? It happened just after Sept 11th attacks, when aid workers were asked to leave for their own safety. The taliban have moved most of that supply to 'an unknown area', and I haven't read anything about them sharing that food with their people who need it, orphanages, etc. considering their past records, I doubt they have.

These packets were more for smaller groups in the center of the country, my understanding, who are in the process of `leaving large cities. Considering it took them less than a month to create and order all that food supply, I don't think the overly critical discussion of 'proper food' is deserved. It sounds like these rations are what is normally given to the US and UK military. The 'beans in tomato sauce' is a classic UK military dish. There are also 'flyers' being released with the food that are in the local language that basically say 'america is your friend, we're trying to get the taliban,' and offer a cash reward for any info leading to Osama bin Laden. (Although I don't know where they were told to share that info with...)

There's a picture on Yahoo news of what is in the packet and what it looks like, someone else linked to it, so you can check there for more info.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

Actually, i was assuming that there would be more air drops, and I tried to imply such, at a different comment.

I hadn't heard about the truck shipments. Can I be overly critical of the news media?

Re:

[sherahi.livejournal.com]

This was focused on more maybe two weeks ago, they were discussing the pros and cons of various places to put the aid and saying it wasn't as easy as it might seem to be. At least one article had maps which showed various aid destination spots and they were also discussing on how to deal with bad water (which I think in those conditions is the primary problem! But I rarely hear that discussed.) It was in the yahoo news coverage is where I read about it...I don't know what the original source was, probably AP.

Last night I had a dream where I had to solve about 8 bazillion big and little problems. And I kept saying-- *I* can't do it all, you have to do this yourself, hey I'm overwhelmed, I can solve every problem on the planet! ....

And sometimes I feel like the citizens of the planet and the US need to realize that. Here we were giving more aid than any other country to them before this conflict, trying to make sure that it got to the people who needed it. But ya know what, "we" can't do it "all". Yes, people are starving to death around the world for various reasons. If you really wanna help, eat less yourself and send money to relief organizations, volunteer your time locally or internationally, but don't sit here on your ass with a refigerator two feet away and bitch about how 'we aren't doing enough'. ....ya know? I'm proud of what the US is doing. I doubt its enough, it will 'never' be enough, but they are trying to eliviate the problem. I don't know of any other war in history where aid was dropped to the 'enemy'. I think it shows how far ethics and people have come in not making such wide sweeping accusations of 'them' and 'us'. We realize that they are in need of aid, and are doing the best possible "in the big picture" to give it. That's pretty damn awesome imo.

:)

[Ya, that 42 million in aid was 'on its way' (two ish weeks ago,) and the biggest problem was distributing it so those who needed it would get it. They didn't want to airdrop it cause they expected the Taliban would just get those large shipments and keep them for themselves. I would assume that is why these shipments are smaller and more spread out, but I don't really know, that is just a wild guess. I'm sure they will get that aid to anyone they can, but they won't risk their own lives to truck or drop it in unsafe areas where planes or trucks might get blown up...]

[i.livejournal.com]

i'd hate to get hit on the head by one of those things