Notes from the U.S. military effort to help Pakistan in the wake of the devastating earthquake this past October:

U.S. helicopters have flown 2,500 sorties, carried 16,000 passengers and delivered nearly 6,000 tons of aid. Just as importantly, the Chinook has become America’s new emblem in Pakistan, a byword for salvation in an area where until recently the U.S. was widely and fanatically detested. Toy Chinooks (made in China, of course) are suddenly popular with Pakistani children. A Kashmiri imam who denounced the U.S. in a recent sermon was booed and heckled by worshippers. “Pakistan is not a nation of ingrates,” a local businessman told me over dinner the other night. “We know where the help is coming from.”

The extent of the U.S. military’s assistance, well-known to Pakistanis, barely registers on the radar screens of most Western news outlets. That’s a pity, because it overlooks one of America’s most significant hearts-and-minds successes so far in the Muslim world. The assistance also illustrates another frequently overlooked fact: When it comes to foreign aid, the Department of Defense is one of the biggest contributors, and what it provides is something no other country can replicate.

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On a recent inspection tour of U.S. facilities here, Gen. Steven Whitcomb, commander of the U.S. Third Army, gave a series of pep talks to the soldiers. His remarks bear repeating:

“We’re fighting two wars. We’re still doing recovery operations from our own natural disaster. We still have soldiers manning the DMZ on the Korean peninsula. We still have sailors manning the flight decks of aircraft carriers at two in the morning. And we can still do this kind of thing. . . . You are all here for no other reason than that the United States asked you to be here. You’ve come to a place you can’t find on a map. But you are making a difference.”