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dead rebel Abdul Haq never really had a chance. He and the 18 men
he led in Afghanistan against the Taliban were poorly equipped (they
had a mere four rifles among them) and ambushed during the night.
Haq was captured on Thursday and killed by the Taliban on Friday.
Initial reports
suggested that Haq was a freelancer, operating without the imprimatur
of any U.S. agency. The Department of Defense denied any knowledge
of his activities. It later turned out that the CIA had made a half-hearted
attempt to rescue him after he made a series of frantic cell-phone
calls; an unmanned Predator drone fired a missile at Haq's attackers.
Donald Rumsfeld eventually acknowledged the effort, but seemed dismissive
of the whole operation: "He requested assistance and received
it. . . [from] another element of the government." In other
words, the U.S. military washes its hands of Haq; to the extent
that any agency had responsibility, it was the CIA.
This may be
one of those dark operations Americans won't know more about for
a generation or two, if ever. What it does appear to show —
based on the sketchy details that have become available — is
a disconcerting lack of cooperation between the CIA and the Pentagon.
Equally troubling
is the role Pakistani intelligence may have played in the disaster.
Haq "was probably compromised the moment he left Pakistan,"
said former national security advisor Robert McFarlane, a friend
of Haq's, in the Los Angeles Times.
If that's true,
then a leading candidate for the Benedict Arnold Award would be
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency. Pakistani President
Pervez Musharraf says, "It is a misperception that ISI is operating
on its own." Others aren't so sure. "I am of the opinion
that not a needle in Afghanistan is secret from the ISI," said
Mehmood Achakzai, a Pakistani politician. "The Taliban cannot
survive for three days without our patronage." Another former
member of the Pakistani legislature, M.P. Bhandara, wrote, "We
now see in retrospect the tragic folly of entrusting our Afghan
policy to the ISI — an institution full of intelligence but
devoid of wisdom."
Brooks's Bestiary
David Brooks has a typically insightful article, "The
Age of Conflict," in the latest Weekly Standard.
(We especially liked this line about America before September 11:
"When on rare occasions people talked about bitter conflict,
they usually meant the fights they were having with their kitchen
renovators.")
But Brooks
misfires at the end. "Since September 11," he writes,
"conservatives have broken down into two camps: those who fear
that Bush will go squishy on Iraq, and those who fear that he will
go squishy on capital gains. The conservatives who fear that the
United States won't take out Saddam are national security conservatives.
. . . The libertarian, anti-government, 'leave us alone' conservatives,
such as Dick Armey and Tom DeLay, believe Bush should use his popularity
to push through capital gains tax reductions and the like."
Brooks is careful
to describe these two supposed camps in neutral terms, but it's
obvious where his sympathies lie. And if the question is formulated
as whether winning the war is more important than cutting taxes,
he is entirely and obviously correct. But there's no reason to posit
that choice. Many conservatives — count us among them —
would like both to overthrow the Iraqi regime and to cut taxes,
and see no conflict between the two goals.
Given that
the debate Brooks has imagined is stacked, his description of Armey
and DeLay amounts to a cheap shot. These men are legislators. There's
not a lot they can do to affect American policy on Afghanistan or
Iraq. But they do have a stimulus bill in front of them, and they
consider it their duty to make it as good as it can be.
Brooks uses
Machiavelli's terms "lions" and "foxes" to apply
essentially the same distinction to conservatives and liberals alike.
("Lions believe in the aggressive use of power. . . . Foxes,
by contrast, believe you have to move cleverly and subtly."
Being forceful and smart is apparently beyond our capacity.)
"It's interesting that the people who are lions on foreign
policy also tend to be lions on domestic policy, while the foxes
are fox-like both abroad and at home. . . . Do we give higher priority
to cracking down on domestic terror or preserving civil liberties?
Do we give higher priority to destroying all terrorist states, or
to preserving our alliances? In these debates, so far, The Weekly
Standard, The New Republic, and The Washington Post
have made the case for the lions. The New York Times, Robert
Novak, Hillary Clinton, Colin Powell, Barney Frank, and Jack Kemp
have supported the foxes."
The Standard
has, indeed, essentially taken the view that criticism of the anti-terrorism
bill is tantamount to softness on terrorism. But The New Republic's
legal correspondent, Jeffrey Rosen, has written some of the most
cogent criticisms of the anti-terrorism bill. He's argued that it
would give law enforcement some powers it shouldn't have, while
denying it others it needs. Not everyone in the camp of the lions
is incapable of making valid distinctions.
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