Haq Job
The sorry death of an Afghan rebel.

By John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru
October 30, 2001 1:40 p.m.

he 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.