Today's Al Jazeera has a summary of this week's conflict in Baluch, but it lacks nuance and depth. Here is the link.
Its counter-intuitive that Nixon should stand head-and-shoulders above all other American heads-of-state in the post-war period in policy space generally known as Federal-Indian Law.
Trying to explain that to people for whom Nixon is defined by his 1950 race against Helen Gahagan Douglas for the US Senate ("Tricky Dick" came from that race, Nixon said of Douglas she was "pink right down to her underwear", which was an anti-Communist slur for those too young to recall political blood sport before the present) or his sweaty debate against JFK, or his "Peace with Honor" pledge in the 1968 race against Humphrey, or the "Nixon Doctrine" (Vietnamization, oddly familiar today), or the Secret War in Cambodia, or the Christmas Bombing campaign (also familiar today as operations during Ramadan), or the 60% of the popular vote to crushing the Democrats under George McGovern in 1972, or Watergate and hubris, is about as easy as getting a badger to get out of your path. Or pursuading a moose to move out of the middle of the street.
So here's the counter-intuitive quiz: Under which basic form of Pakistani regime, parlimentary democracy or military dictatorship (and Pakistan has had two of each), have the Buluchi tribes benefited, and under which basic form have they benefited ... not so much.
Answers in comments.
And no, you can't "get" FIL unless you get why Indians who do Federal policy test every administration, and every candidate, against Nixon and the Germans, Haldeman and Ehrlichman. The highwater mark for the United States as an Occupying Power in the second-half of the 20th century.
Posted by EBW at January 28, 2005 05:44 PM | TrackBackSad to say by today's standards, all of them labored under some conception of the old fashioned concept of 'conscience' and actually worried about public policy reasonably working for the masses of people it was intended to. That's why Herb Stein made a good fit with the bunch.
But on the domestic front as far as policy was concerned, it may have been the high water mark of liberalism for all too many projects that never again saw the light of day. National health care, guaranteed income, etc.
Nixon had a tourtured soul. You could read it in his eyes. You'll see no soul reflected back from the Bush's. Just the lust for power and boodle. Always it's the oil and riches that are at bottom of so much of today's policy, that and feeding his cronies. Who did Nixon turn to? Bebe Rebozo? It seems really pathetic how far we have fallen. There were crooks and criminals in Nixon's cabinet. War criminals too. Most actually 'did policy', and understood a fair amount of it too. Pat Moynihan was there helping with domestic policy, and had some good egg heads there with him.
Now we've got the most cravenly deadly bunch of know nothing SOB's ever to occupy the offices. Nixon's entire domestic agenda might be considered too radical for the majority of the Democratic party today. (As in Democratic voters).
The answer was ISDA, 1970. Me I'm guessing with Pak, it was under the dictatorship that these tribes benefited. Probably more likely than not by being left the hell alone mostly.
Posted by: VJ at January 29, 2005 04:53 AM