H/t to Tree Frog and The Skeptical Bureaucrat.
Frog asks an apt question about this film of Jackie Kennedy’s visit to Pakistan in March 1962:
“Can you imagine Michelle Obama or any U.S. First Lady going to Pakistan any time soon and getting a friendly reception?”
Utterly impossible.
The Pakistani population is now hostile to the U.S. government and its representatives because of its drone war, which amounts to program of massive targeted assassination of people living in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
In 1962, there were three sorts of countries: those aligned with the U.S., those aligned with the USSR, and those not aligned (neutral).
Pakistan fell into the first camp because of its difficulties with India, which officially was unaligned. Pakistanis from that time period fondly refer to Pakistan as the 51st state.
So the environment was certainly welcoming for Jackie Kennedy, who was the most admired and popular woman in the world.
As for drones, it appears the FAA has given approval to drone flights over the U.S. Americans may need those backyard bunkers from the 1950s after all.
Can you imagine a President having an open car motorcade in Cairo, Egypt like Nixon did in 1974?
We need to again go back to Jim DiEugenio’s article on JFK and “third world” nationalism. Ironically–or logically if you believe that the media is controlled in the manner described in Frances Saunder’s The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World Of Arts and Letters, i.e. with a quid pro quo controlled left to steer “dissent” away from the National Security State — the “left?” is the biggest critic of the idea that JFK had a significantly different policy towards the decolonizing countries than did other presidents.
This posturing must be confronted in 2014. These Foundation funded leftist are helping the right, be steering the left away from the National Security States most vulnerable points. Noam Chomsky and his ilk have done nothing but marginalize the left for 45 years, making it nearly completely without effect.
Jackie in Pakistan looks like a liberal moment but it actually shows us just how war right we have gone with a tamed, hot -house fake left that never goes after the national security state where it counts.