Illuminating the Arts-Policy Nexus 

As any devoted fan knows, the Fox hit show “24” is in its eighth and final season.

On August 12, after a day of visiting rape victims in lovely, lush Kivu Province, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had a town meeting of sorts with Congolese students far, far away in the capital, Kinshasa. When one of the students asked her what Mr. Clinton thought, she blew it. It was understandable; she was tired and he is no longer her hierarchical supervisor. Actually, the exchanges had been friendly enough at the beginning but got a little edgy, according to Jeffrey Gettleman of The New York Times, “when several students pushed her on why Congo, whose first prime minister was ousted with the help of the CIA, should now trust the United States. She then became a little prickly.” Mr. Gettleman chose his words wisely. Others have not been so prudent. Prime Minister Lumumba was probably ousted with at least the encouragement of the CIA, but he was not outed. What would you do in the summer of 1960, as Lumumba was bringing in 1,000 Soviets into the country and acting so weird as to persuade Washington officialdom that he was on drugs? What would you do if you were the CIA Chief in the Congo — the late Larry Devlin, a swashbuckling veteran of World War II in Italy, formerly based in Brussels, where he had taken the measure of Lumumba at a conference the year before? What would you do to advise the rival Binza Group, headed by Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, whose life Devlin had saved that summer in warning him of impending attacks. You probably would have encouraged him to oust Lumumba, which the Binza Group did in September 1960.

Last week, Scotland Yard (alas, working without their chief sleuth, the late Sherlock Holmes) uncovered a major bomb plot. Those arrested were all Pakistanis. However, unlike the current U.S. policy, they chose to arrest the suspects, after months of carefully tracking their movements (notwithstanding Bob Quick, Britain’s senior counterterrorism expert, whose comical slip-up required the accelerating of planned raids and resulted in his resignation), not bomb them from 30,000 feet. Likewise, when four years ago bombers blew up trains entering Madrid's central station, the Spanish police laboriously ran them down, eventually cornering a number of the ringleaders in a safehouse. That time, the perpetrators were mainly Algerians and Moroccans. Those arrested, and later convicted and imprisoned, had no formal links with Al Qaeda. In fact, their ties were non existent, a government-appointed commission later found. Doubtless, however, it was the example of Al Qaeda that prompted their horrific attacks. The Spanish, on their manhunt, did not choose to bomb them, or even blast them out of their hideaways. (Seven suspects did, however, blow themselves up when they found themselves surrounded by Spanish authorities.) But the investigation took careful police work, backed by the latest in forensic and technological tools. Couldn't the Americans and NATO have done the same at the onset of their intervention in Afghanistan? Certainly, investigating domestic terrorism isn’t the same as stamping it out in a hostile and foreign land, but allied forces could have found informers and probably help from the rank and file of locals who wanted to have nothing to do with those who blew up New York's World Trade Center. Even many in the ranks of the Taliban may have been privately uneasy by the Al Qaeda attack. Moreover, Osama bin Laden was a distant, shadowy figure for most of them. Instead, we had a blanket armed invasion. The UN has reported that, in 2008, the number of civilian casualties rose by 40 percent. Surely there is a better way of finding bin Laden. Western forces are not there to reform Islam, to liberate women, or to install democracy. Afghan society must choose for itself whether or not it wants to pursue these lofty goals.