“The humanitarian crisis in Swat gets worse every day, which is why it’s so critical that the government of Pakistan and the Obama Administration undertake immediate joint relief operations modeled on our successful efforts following the 2005 Kashmir earthquake. The United States must commit military assets, such as Chinook heavy-lift helicopters, combat engineers and uniformed medical personnel, that the Pakistani government needs to facilitate these efforts without further delay. When terrorist groups such as Jamaat-ud Dawa are reportedly already operating relief camps in Swat, there is no basis for turning back the far more capable assistance of the United States military.

“The statistics underscore the emergency: between two and three million civilians have been displaced and have little or no access to adequate shelter, food or medical care. In a few weeks, the summer monsoons will turn ramshackle camps into fetid swamps, incubators for a host of preventable epidemics. History has already taught us that poorly-resourced refugee communities are prime breeding grounds for extremist movements; the Taliban itself had its genesis in the Afghan refugee community driven into Pakistan during the 1980s and 1990s. We don’t need to repeat that disaster when instead we can show America’s true commitment to the Pakistani people.”

So speaking of public diplomacy, it’s often said that public diplomacy is a poor substitute for good policy — and there’s truth to that, though they don’t need to be defined in opposition to each other. (Gen. David Petraeus tells a story about how, at the start of the surge, visiting dignitaries would tell him he had a public-diplomacy problem; he rejoindered that he had a results problem.) U.S. efforts at helping the people of the Swat Valley might be better promoted, especially as bin Laden’s making it a central aspect of his latest propaganda tape.

From The Washington Post:

A top Hamas leader was killed Thursday in an Israeli air strike in the Gaza Strip, as violence entered its sixth day and a Hamas rocket destroyed part of an apartment building in the Israeli port city of Ashdod.

Nizar Rayyan, a cleric who was one of Hamas’s most hardline political leaders, had called for renewed suicide bombings inside Israel and refused to go into hiding, as other Hamas leaders had done. His death, confirmed in a statement issued by Hamas on Thursday, marked the first known fatality of a senior leader of the militant group since Israel began air strikes on Saturday. [...]

Israeli aircraft and naval forces attacked about 20 Hamas targets in Gaza Thursday, including a government complex, the Israeli military said. The death toll in Gaza rose to at least 410, including dozens of civilians. More than 1,600 people in Gaza have been wounded.

According to The Post, Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said a ground assault remains “an option.” The New York Times quotes an unnamed Israeli military official saying that a “limited ground operation aimed at destroying remaining sites was likely once the wet weather cleared.”