(CNN) -- The U.S. response to the increasing natural disaster in Pakistan is, like so much else when it comes to American relations with that country, too little and too tentative. Epic flooding now hitting Pakistan is an unfolding humanitarian crisis on the scale of its 2005 earthquake, which claimed some 75,000 lives, or the 2004 Asian tsunami, in which more than 200,000 people died. And because of the gradual nature of flooding, as opposed to the sudden impact of an earthquake, the devastation over time could overwhelm those earlier crises. One in nine Pakistanis -- some 20 million people -- are already homeless, lacking food or medicine. Health officials warn that a cholera epidemic is likely, with 3½ million children now at risk.
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Ken Ballen says Pakistan floods are crisis that could rival 2005 earthquake, Asian tsunami
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But U.S. not meeting disaster with rapid, comprehensive approach, as before
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Extremists ready to assume aid role; U.S. squandering chance to woo Pakistanis, he says
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Ballen: Aid efforts are important opportunities to garner good will; wrest aid role from extremists
But the $76 million is dwarfed by the massive humanitarian assistance -- hundreds of millions -- the @placeholder military brought directly to victims of the 2005 earthquake and the 2004 tsunami -- delivered via aircraft carriers, hospital ships and thousands of American troops.
Yet our research shows that in the case of both the tsunami and Pakistani earthquake, public opinion changed only because the @placeholder military delivered the aid directly, in a comprehensive campaign cooperative with, but not dependent on, local governments or nonprofit groups.