h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If United Nations statistics are to be believed, more than 30,000 earthlings will die today of starvation/malnutrition. And thousands more from diseases and injuries that could be treated.

That means 40,000 people also died yesterday, and the day before. And forty thousand more will die tomorrow and the day after.

Why?

The projection for Afghanistan alone (even before any threat of war) was that 4 million will die of hunger and disease this winter.

May I suggest the USAF bomb them with food and medicine. It would be kinder and cheaper. With continuous day and night saturation, spread all over the country, no bloody group could gain control of the needed supplies, and the US could count on at least 4 million new friends.

peace
~jwf~

that is beautiful. it paint a lovely image in my head. if only life were that simple eh? thanx, that was cool

I'm glad someone's looking at the bigger picture. Does anyone know if there's anything practical any of us can do to help (for instance the thousands of ordinary decent Afghan people who are caught up in this, or anyone else who could benefit)?
I think people are experiencing a need to do something positive as a result of all this. Which, despite the knocks it's taken lately, restores your faith in human nature a bit, eh?

jwf,

That's a really nice idea, but somehow I don't think they would think of combating nastyness with niceness!

I guess their excuse would be it'd cost a lot (regardless of how much it'd cost to bomb them) and lets face it, we all know that nothing is as good for the opinion polls as a small war! Why don't you rune for office, we could do with a few bright ideas like that.

Bambi

Rune for office? You might as well heiroglyph for office!

'combating nastyness with niceness' - has any one ever tried it?

Drop tonnes of food in and leaflets publicising the massive rewards available to for capturing / killing wanted terrorists. Open the borders and set up huge refugee camps to keep the regular people alive over the winter, and leave the Taliban, the Northern Alliance and volunteer units of the Armed Forces to go and slug it out, with as little collateral damage.

Not especially nice, not orthadox but at least allows 'folk' a chance to run away. Hmm.