The gray lady has an OK day

The New York Times is not what it used to be. Joseph Epstein made a point some months ago of publicly announcing the end of his subscription. He gave good reasons. I told him at the time that I would've joined him except that I need the acrostic puzzle on alternate Sundays in the magazine.

Every once in a while, however, the Gray Lady surprises. Today was an unusually good day. On the op-ed page there is a piece by Ken Burns that is really quite wonderful. There is another piece by Edward Ball that is almost as good. Both have to do with the aftermath, now 150 years later, of the onset of the Civil War. Today, of course, is the literal anniversary, the shot in Fort Sumter having been fired on this very day 150 years ago.

Aside from the Civil War material, one of the paper's newest permanent residents on the op-ed page, Joe Nocera, has a fine piece on what he calls the Boone Pickens bill about using more of America's natural gas supply for transportation fuel. It's a well written piece, and even makes policy sense. It is certainly better than anything that the now departed (not dead, I mean, just retired) Mr. Herbert has written in decades.

But I have to say that the item I found most amusing in today's paper is David Sanger's piece entitled "Possible Libya Stalemate Puts Stress on US Policy." The piece ends with a quote said to be from an Obama adviser. This adviser acknowledged last week, says Sanger, "on a day when rebel forces seemed particularly hapless and disorganized", that: "We are not in a good place."

No kidding. I could have told them that they would be in such a place. No, wait! I did tell them they would be in such a place. I did so on March 22. See blog post of that date, called "Down the Rabbit Hole." It's never polite to say I told you so. But at the moment I'm too bemused to care about politeness. So here goes: I told you so.

While I'm at it, let me say it again. There is another piece, a front-page story, not only in the New York Times but also in the Washington Post, and it's about Pakistan. It seems that the head of the ISI has told us to remove all CIA contractors in Pakistan, to dramatically reduce the number of drone strikes in the tribal areas, and just basically to shove it. This is definitely an "I told you so" moment for me, but a relatively private one. I did once or twice before write up the very bad odds of our persuading the Pakistani government to really go after the Taliban and Al Qaeda within and near their northeastern borders. It just seemed to me, especially after Pres. Obama's December 1, 2009 speech in which he laid down a date for an exit ramp from Afghanistan, that the Pakistanis were not about to burn bridges with their Pashtun associates, since they knew they were staying where they live pretty much forever, while we would be leaving sooner or later, probably sooner. But more memorable to me, I had arguments, well, not so much arguments but discussions let's call them, with both Sec. Powell and Deputy Sec. Armitage about this very matter. They were more sanguine that the Pakistanis would do what we hoped they would do; I simply pointed out that their basic national interest over the long term did not run parallel to ours, and that, it seemed to me, we could expect only begrudged assistance, and sometimes we would not get even that. I think I am proven right, but then again, perhaps this is not really over yet.