The Cheney-Churchill comparison has not yet been made. But it is coming. Sooner or later every conservative thinks he is the next Churchill.
Dick Cheney is on TV every day. Even calls in to a radio talk show in North Dakota. Not only is it out of character for him, it is against the conventions of American politics for a former VP to criticize a new President so soon after the election. Perhaps Cheney is scared that he will be indicted for war crimes and is offering a pre-emptive defense.Torture is not just any war crime: it carries the death penalty. Maybe it is not his own indictment that he fears but that of his former aides like Addington. Or he is drumming up publicity for his book. He could just be bored after his retirement. Is Lynne Cheney making him mow the lawn, if he stays home?
There are two sources of political power. The more obvious is that of patronage. When you hold office, you hold the purse strings,can make appointments, pass bills and set policy.
The less obvious is the power of insurgency. When you are out of power, you get to sit back and criticize, watch for abuses of power, put your opponent on the defensive by exposing corruption. To do this effectively you must be aggressive and passionate. You need to have a cause that will unite your base, which might whither away without patronage.
The best situation of all is to be able to do both. As you are reforming the Government in your own vision, the past abuses of the previous Government come out. The more embarrassing the revelations, the more dispirited the opposition’s base will be. They will be too busy defending the indefensible to launch any offensive against you. And you can use that breathing room to further your own agenda. (more…)
The Railway was a failure when it was a monopoly. Now it has competition from trucks plying the recently built highways. So they had to shape up to survive. The Government owned airlines are struggling due to competition from the newly licensed private carriers. The Indian Airlines (the domestic airline) has already been folded into Air India. So why did the Railway thrive under competition and not IA? (more…)
The Indian Railway is the world’s largest employer. The main lines were built in British times. Mostly to move the army around to quell rebellions in different parts. The Madras regiment in Punjab, the Punjab Regiment in Assam and so on. But later, it also became the common man’s mode of travel in India. For a few dollars you can go from Chennai to Delhi or from Mumbai to Kolkatta. The trains are slow and the bathrooms are–ahem–aromatic. The food is of questionable hygiene. But you will see the countryside, and most likely make some friends. In the long distance trains, if you have a sleeper berth, the journey is comfortable but not luxurious. I am not talking about the palaces on wheels meant for foreign tourists. (more…)
I mentioned to a colleague that Varadhan, a mathematician of Indian origin at NYU, won the Abel Prize. One of the top honors in the field. My colleague turned to the person sitting next to him, a visiting academic, and said:
In the middle of all that corruption, they are good in statistics. It must be because the British were good at it.
He was expressing a common view of India as a corrupt place where nothing works, perhaps with an occasional genius. Even Americans whose knowledge of India does not extend beyond watching “Slumdog Millionaire” feel free to pass such judgment. (more…)
What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war…A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics…
As Sen. Clinton pointed out back then, this speech is the only thing Obama brought to the Primary campaign. It was enough. In that speech, of which only a few seconds of video remain, Obama laid out a vision for how to use (and not use) military force in the complicated world we live in.
There is an apocryphal story about Gandhi, said to have taken place when he was working as a lawyer in London. It was unusual for an Indian to have an Englishman working under him, but Gandhi had an English assistant. One day Gandhi asked him to do something and the Asssistant asked,
