Extending the Hand of America

By JOHN A. PANNETON, National President

The recent mission of the USNS Mercy that took the Navy hospital ship and its staff from the Philippines to Bangladesh, Indonesia and East Timor was much more than a humanitarian effort. It was a way to project American values across a swath of the globe mired in poverty and susceptible to the incendiary enticements of terrorist recruiters.

The message from the Mercy to the thousands of people along its five-month route was simple and direct: “The United States cares about you.” It is a message that bears repeating.

Despite its long record of humanitarian actions, the United States generally has done a terrible job of conveying to others the central elements of the American culture, such as compassion and support for human dignity. This gap in communications has left an opening for adversaries to portray Americans as, for example, “great Satans” who are powerful, greedy and tyrannical.

The mission also demonstrated that Americans don’t want to go it alone, and work well with people of diverse cultures and beliefs. The Mercy staff comprised medical experts from eight other nations: India, Indonesia, Canada, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Bangladesh and Australia.

The 11 partner organizations onboard Mercy ranged from Project Hope to Chittagong Medical College of Bangladesh and the Tzu Chi Foundation, a humanitarian and medical care group based in Taiwan.

Yet the mission was enabled by capabilities that are uniquely American. The United States is a world leader in medical technology, and Mercy — one of two hospital ships of the U.S. Navy — has 12 operating rooms, 1,000 beds and can quickly provide advanced medical care to any spot on the globe.

The brilliance of the mission concept lies in its disarming simplicity. Go to impoverished regions of the world. Provide superb medical care, train the local professionals and rehabilitate nearby clinics, hospitals, schools and piers. Ask nothing in return.

Vice Adm. Donald C. Arthur, Navy surgeon general, noted that the mission “extends the hand of America that few people really get to see.”

Many will remember it, however. Nationwide surveys within Indonesia and Bangladesh by the Washington nonprofit group, Terror Free Tomorrow, concluded that the Mercy mission helped favorably change public opinion there toward the United States.

The consensus approval of Mercy’s mission cut across every demographic group and political view in those countries — and even included supporters of Osama bin Laden. The changing perception of the United States should help counter the efforts of terrorist recruiters in those nations looking for new converts to attack American interests across the globe.

At each stop, the multinational medical staff rendered care to thousands of local residents, providing optometry exams, immunizations, plastic surgery and ophthalmology operations. Meanwhile, Seabees aboard Mercy went ashore to rewire the hospital at Tawi Tawi, Philippines, install modern water pumps at Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and repair medical equipment all along the mission route.

Mercy even dispatched the U.S. Navy Show Band ashore to entertain the crowds attracted to the schools and clinics at each stop. All told, Mercy touched the lives of 200,000 people from the Pacific Rim to South Asia.

One of them was Mara Harun, a 60-year-old mother of three in Jolo, Philippines, who lost her eyesight to cataracts seven years ago but can see today.

Another was Indonesian fisherman Henry Faisal, who today is free of pain for the first time since December 2004, when he aggravated a hernia while racing to escape the waves of the tsunami that devastated his homeland and took the lives of his wife and two children.

And there was Filipino schoolgirl Soraya Tampalan, born with a severely cleft lip, who was driven from school by the taunts of other children but now looks into her mirror with confidence about her future.

Senior Navy leaders, including Adm. Mike Mullen, chief of naval operations, and Adm. William Fallon, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, conceived this mission as a means to reach out to others at a moment in time when the nation needs friends and allies in every corner of the world.

The Navy now is assessing the feasibility of two missions per year by Mercy and its sister ship, USNS Comfort, with Africa and Latin America high on the list of regional priorities.

The Navy League supports the prospect of future missions with enthusiasm and pride.

Semper Fidelis.

I want to hear from you about the Navy League. Contact me at jpanneton@navyleague.org or by mail at 2300 Wilson Blvd., Suite 200, Arlington, VA 22201-3308.