The US response to the tsunami disaster is of strategic importance, writes Conor O'Clery.
The surprising thing is that the Bush administration did not see right from the start the public relations benefits of pictures of American helicopter crews distributing fresh water to Muslims in Indonesia rather than firing bullets at insurgents in Iraq.
But it was unquestionably tardy in its initial response to the biggest natural disaster for decades. US officials themselves admitted this and were quoted saying that the belated decision to send Colin Powell and Governor Jeb Bush to the region was partly to defuse hurt feelings.
During the first three days after the December 26th tsunami slammed into Indian Ocean coasts, Mr Bush had remained secluded in his ranch in Crawford, Texas, in contrast to the instantaneous response of many world leaders to the September 11th attacks on the US.
Critics began complaining that by not speaking out he was missing an opportunity to show goodwill at a time of worldwide opposition to his policies in Iraq.
Much was also made of the comment by Jan Egeland, UN emergency relief co-ordinator, the day after the disaster, that rich countries were "stingy", which stung the Bush administration particularly and set off a debate about America's role in providing aid worldwide.
The New York Times said Egeland was "right on target" and pointed out that the $15 million first proposed by Washington was less than half of the cost of the Bush inaugural festivities this month and that the subsequent increase to $35 million remained "a miserly drop in the bucket" in keeping with the pitiful amount (less than a quarter of 1 per cent) of the US budget allocated to non-military foreign aid.
A Democratic senator, Pat Leahy, commented witheringly that the US "spends $35 million before breakfast every day inside Iraq" and that by missing an opportunity America would have to play "catch-up ball".
US congressman Albert Wynn of Maryland weighed in, saying the president needed to show the world "that Americans do care, that Americans are compassionate, to put a different face on America from what people have been seeing as result of the Iraq war".
The strategic importance of the US response were spelled out by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who argued that the image of American power solving problems was the best antidote for America's global difficulties.
"An unpopular America has to seize every opportunity it can - to 'walk the walk' about our values, instead of just talking the talk," he said. "It's a moral duty, but it's also a national security requirement."
The White House was in fact fast coming to the same conclusion by the middle of last week. The aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln battle group was deployed to the region, followed by a Marine amphibious group and a 1,000-bed hospital ship, and fleets of helicopters and C130, C17 and C5 transport planes.
Bush dispatched Colin Powell and his own brother, Jeb, to the Indian Ocean, raised the amount of government aid to $350 million and on Monday, appointed his father, George H.W. Bush, and former president Bill Clinton to encourage Americans to dig deep to help the victims.
At a White House ceremony with his father and Clinton by his side, Bush praised "the good heart of the American people" as the greatest source of American generosity.
The "privatisation" of American aid donations had a practical purpose: the $350 million pledge basically emptied the federal disaster fund.
Across America people and businesses did dig deep. Microsoft committed $2 million in cash and its employees raised $700,000. Pfizer pledged $35 million in cash and medicines. Amazon.com raised $14 million in three days. Citigroup promised $3 million. The American Red Cross pulled in $80 million, mostly from individuals. Doctors Without Borders got $20 million from ordinary Americans.
Bill Clinton acknowledged that the overall US aid effort would improve America's image in the Muslim world, as by doing the right thing it gave America a chance to "reach across religious and political divides". The choice of Clinton to help out reflects an unusually warm relationship between the former president and the Bush family - on television he and Bush snr laughed and slapped each other's knees during interviews - and it paid immediate political dividends for the White House.
Clinton said he did not think the president had been tardy at all in his response, as no one realised at first the terrible effect of the tsunami.
Other defenders of the administration pointed out that several countries including France and Britain (and Ireland) had also raised pledges dramatically as the tragedy unfolded. Mr Egeland rowed back on his comment about stinginess, saying that he wasn't targeting the US which was the "the biggest donor and the most generous" (though in cash terms Japan provided more, pledging $500 million).
He hoped, however, that there would be an equally generous response in eastern Congo, were there were no dramatic tsunami-type pictures to highlight a humanitarian disaster, and in the developing world, where 1,000 people died every day from preventable disease and humanitarian neglect.
Andrew Natsios, administrator for the US Agency for International Development, defended the US aid record, saying that America contributed 40 per cent of all humanitarian relief worldwide, but he managed to spark a new row with France by observing that Paris was not a major donor to other nations.
This was a "shocking" comment, protested French ambassador Jean-David Levitte, who said that France, with an economy a fraction of the size of the US, had already given $28 million for tsunami relief when the US was pledging little more than that.
French anger probably reflected suspicions abroad about Mr Bush's motive in initially announcing a coalition of the US, India, Japan and Australia to lead the aid effort in the Indian Ocean. This was seen by some as a calculated snub to the United Nations, whose Secretary General Kofi Annan has fallen out of favour in Washington. It also did not go down well with US allies.
The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who has taken over the presidency of the G8 group of nations, made it clear that the UN should take the lead in the relief operation.
Facing suspicions of political opportunism, the Bush administration conceded that the group should work with the UN, and Colin Powell was instructed to attend today's Jakarta aid summit proposed by EU development commissioner Louis Michael and presided over by Kofi Annan.
There were dangers, too, in pushing the argument that America should be forgiven for past sins because they were helping out, said Michael O'Hanlon, an analyst at the Brookings Institution, who said that "people will think we're being very crass and exploiting a humanitarian tragedy for our own benefit".
The US response was "necessary and not debatable", he told the Associated Press. However, helping was not just the right thing to do but was in America's national interest, Colin Powell said. "If nations are poor, if they don't see hope, if they're riddled by disease, if no one is helping them, then radicalism takes over.
"They lose faith in democracy, and they start turning in other directions," he added. "This is an investment not only in the welfare of these people, which in and of itself is a good thing to do, it's an investment in our own national security."