America's Changing Face

As President Bush visits India and Pakistan this week, some historical perspective on how times---and we---have changed:

In Pakistan (Lyndon) Johnson made headlines with his campaign-style diplomacy. On his way into the city from the Karachi airport, he stopped to shake hands with some of the applauding, enthusiastic crowd lining the streets. Spotting a barefoot man standing with a camel at an intersection, a man with a fine, cherubic face, Johnson stepped across a muddy ditch to greet him and urge, as he had done repeatedly on the trip, "y'all come visit me in the United States." The next day a Karachi newspaper lauded Johnson for reaching out "to the man with no shirt on his back" and for inviting Bashir Ahmad, the camel driver, to come to America and stay at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. Not long after Johnson returned home, the American Embassy in Pakistan reported that Bashir's visit to America had become a cause celebre and that, if it didn't happen, "the Vice President was going to look like the biggest four-flusher in history." Before Johnson could arrange the trip, however, the Pakistani government, fearful that Bashir, an illiterate peasant, would embarrass it, had him arrested and hidden by the police. A direct appeal by Johnson to the President of Pakistan freed Bashir to come to the United States, where with the help of a sophisticated Pakistani translator, who turned much of what Bashir said into "beautiful little homilies," the camel driver made a triumphal tour and received a pickup truck donated by the Ford Motor Company.

From "Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961-1973" by Robert Dallek


About 5,000 personnel including snipers, commandos and U.S. marines using helicopters, bomb detectors and electronic jammers will protect President George W. Bush during his visit to India this week, officials said on Monday.

The personnel would be part of a three-ring security cordon around the U.S. president and First Lady Laura Bush who are due to arrive in New Delhi for their maiden visit to the subcontinent on Wednesday, they said.

"He is a much-threatened VVIP. We are fully geared," Manish Agarwal, a top Delhi police officer involved in security operations, told Reuters.

Besides the inner-ring of security forces, an outer cordon would be deployed "as deep as possible" to thwart any attack by a rocket launcher, Agarwal said.

Bush would hop around the city in helicopters to take part in events scheduled for him, police said.

Reuters, 2/27/06