Stethoscope diplomacy

THE 1,000-BED US Navy hospital ship Mercy is now steaming toward Asia to provide humanitarian medical relief. The Navy should seek out more such opportunities for its well-equipped hospital ships.

The model for this Navy-civilian cooperation was the work the Mercy did off the coast of Banda Aceh in Indonesia in early 2005, after the tsunami destroyed much of that city and flooded its major hospital. The Mercy's sister ship, the Comfort, went to the Gulf of Mexico after Hurricane Katrina last summer and, again, uniformed and civilian medical personnel helped to fill in after onshore facilities were disabled.

Doctors, nurses, social workers, and others from Massachusetts General Hospital, organized under the auspices of the nonprofit Project Hope, served in both Banda Aceh and the Gulf. A week ago yesterday, their contributions were recognized in a ceremony on the flight deck of the Comfort, which docked in South Boston after conducting an exercise in Halifax harbor in Nova Scotia.

The Navy's surgeon general, Vice Admiral Donald Arthur, told the MGH volunteers that in Banda Aceh they had ''extended a hand with a stethoscope in an area of the world that has not been very friendly to America." In an interview before the ceremony, Arthur said there had been a substantial increase in support for the United States in Indonesia as a result of the relief provided by the Mercy and the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln.

Individual nongovernment organizations will have to decide whether working in such close cooperation with the US military would compromise their mission as nonpolitical providers of medical care. Project Hope, the Honolulu-based Aloha Medical Mission, and Operation Smile, which specializes in correcting facial deformities in children, have all decided that collaboration with the Navy is a plus. All three groups are participating in the Mercy's current tour to the Philippines, East Timor, Indonesia, and Bangladesh.

Despite the Defense Department's more than $400 billion annual budget, there will always be attempts to cut back on efforts not seen as directly connected to national security. In the case of humanitarian tours by the Mercy and Comfort, the Pentagon should resist any such impulse. The ships and the uniformed and civilian caregivers they carry are the best possible defense against the demonizing of America by its enemies abroad.