U.S. CAN'T RELY ON THUGS FOR PROTECTION

Are we losing it? Have the recent acts of terrorism caused us to cut our
moorings in a flood of outrage and frustration? Is that what led respected
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman to write that "we need to be just
a little bit crazy" and enlist the Russian mafia, Afghan drug lords and
ex-KGB spymaster Vladimir Putin to provide us with security?

At first, everyone from the president on down appeared so rational in the
immediate aftermath of the horror of the terrorist attacks. Now, a
pervasive sense of impotence in the face of terror seems to have
overwhelmed us.

The problem is that the president's perfectly delivered speech upped the
ante too high and too fast.

After promising to eliminate terror and its sponsors from every nation on
the globe, and after Congress granted him unprecedented power to do just
that, now comes the recognition that terrorism cannot be fought with war.

Terrorism is more analogous to a virulent, malignant illness, a plague that
needs to be exposed, contained and then, yes, eradicated with the most
precise surgical and other means.

It was the responsibility of Congress to debate those means, to provide
oversight in our system of checks and balances. Yet, in an act of
collective dereliction of duty, only one member - Oakland Democrat, Rep.
Barbara Lee - had the integrity to ask tough questions, and she has been
excoriated for it.

The $340 billion that we will spend on the military this year has only an
incidental connection with fighting terrorism. It is intended to fight a
Cold War that no longer exists. This new enemy does not present for battle
of that sort.

On the other hand, our massive but secret intelligence and covert
operations budget is designed to provide the necessary tools for monitoring
and containing terrorism.

Yet the failure of U.S. intelligence in thwarting Osama bin Laden is
alarming, given that the CIA has been under presidential order since 1998
to incapacitate the man and his movement.

That they did not come close should be the subject of a major congressional
investigation, if that body ever gets around to a serious consideration of
this tragedy's origins.

Our intelligence agencies messed up big-time, but that's no reason to
abandon them for reliance on the world's freelance thugs and criminals to
do our dirty work for us.

As documented by the CIA's own published review, the Eisenhower and Kennedy
administrations tried that when they attempted to unleash the Las Vegas
mafia, upset with the loss of its Havana gambling operations, to
assassinate Fidel Castro, but it was just one of many such fiascoes.
Criminals are not reliable allies.

Yet that point is lost on columnist Friedman, who last week advocated
bypassing the CIA in favor of those who can fight the enemy on their own
terms: gangsters of our own.

If the battle were in Central America, he argues, we should enlist the
services of the Cali drug cartel. They don't operate in Afghanistan,
Friedman ruefully reports, "but the Russian mafia sure does, so do various
Afghan factions, drug rings and Pakistani secret agents."

These last home-grown groups, Pakistanis included, are deeply involved in
the heroin trade, which until a year ago was the only significant crop in
Afghanistan and is still the main source of revenue for the Taliban, as
well as the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, with which the United States is
now allied.

The irony in now turning to drug criminals to overthrow the Taliban is that
in August, during talks in Pakistan with the Afghan ambassador, the U.S.
assistant secretary of State for South Asian affairs, Christina Rocca,
praised the Taliban for its progress in eradicating the opium crop. She
pledged additional aid to ease the burden on Afghan farmers forced to give
up their one cash crop.

Last May, top Department of State and Drug Enforcement Administration
officials crowed about the drug eradication program after visits to
Taliban-controlled areas. James Callahan, the state department's narcotics
expert for Asia, credited the Taliban for getting farmers to stop growing
opium by resorting to religious appeals rather than coercion.

Believe that, and you can believe that the $43 million in aid that
Secretary of State Colin Powell announced that same week - to help the
Afghans, "including those farmers who have felt the impact of the ban on
poppy cultivation, a decision by the Taliban that we welcome" - was simply
humanitarian aid and not really a reward to the Taliban for helping the
Untied States in its drug war.

Recent evidence is overwhelming that the Taliban conned us and retained
massive stockpiles of drugs to fund their operation.

The drug trade is alive and well, and columnist Friedman will find ample
recruits for his war against terrorism.

The administration, as it embraces the enemies of the Taliban, should
remember that today's terrorists - particularly bin Laden - were
yesterday's freedom fighters.