US Food Aid Propaganda

[Trei, Peter]

> Matthew Gaylor[SMTP:freematt at coil.com] writes:
> 
	[...]
> Then as a 
> watched the news tonight I heard again what I've been hearing on 
> various American media ad infinitum that the US Military had dropped 
> 37,500 food packages along with the first wave of attacks on 
> Afghanistan, on Sunday.  Realizing that there are several million 
> refugees in the northern areas of Afghanistan, such a small number of 
> food packages doesn't seem really that adequate. 
[...]
> My theory is that if you hear that the US is dropping food packages 
> along with bombs it reinforces the propaganda that the US is doing 
> this to "help" the Afghan people.  It doesn't matter from a 
> psychological operations perspective if the aid is effective but 
> rather it only matters if the target group thinks you're helping.  In 
> this case the target audience being the Afghan refugees and the 
> unwitting American media consumer.
	[...]
> Regards,  Matt-
> 
This is one of those things where you can run the numbers. 

     ...37500 meals dropped on Sunday. The packages don't 
look like they weighed much more than a pound. Lets be very 
generous, and say 1 kilo.

That's 37.5 metric tons in one night, max. Sounds like a lot?

According to the World Food Program website (www.wfp.org),
the UN is trying to truck in 52,000 tons a month. Assuming a
30 day month, that's 1733 tons/day. 

The US bombing shut down the UN aid delivery for a few days,
(it's now going ahead again, even under fire, because the 
need is so critical). 

The US airdrops replaced, at the very maximum, less then
2.5% of the food whose delivery was prevented by the 
bombing.

I'm reminded of the recent corporate ad from RJ Reynolds, 
where they made of deal of delivering some amount (less
then 10 tons, I think) or aid to Kosovo. That amounted to
a single truckload. They then spent many times the cost
of the aid on airtime to trumpet their humanitarian efforts.

Peter Trei