Top security officials of the Bush administration held a meeting Friday in the White House to discuss giving expanded authority to the CIA and special operations forces to conduct covert operations against Al Qaeda figures in the tribal areas of north-western Pakistan. This would be a foolish undertaking, one that is almost certain to have calamitous unintended consequences.

The immediate reason for considering incursions into Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas is a mounting anxiety that Al Qaeda is increasingly targeting Pakistan. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto, which President Pervez Musharraf blamed on an Islamist warlord linked to Al Qaeda, is the most publicised of several recent attacks against Pakistani soldiers and politicians. A secondary reason is the assessment that Al Qaeda has been able to reconstitute itself in Pakistan.

Security officials in the Bush administration are not the only ones tempted to go after “high-value” Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan. At various points presidential candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden have also yielded to that temptation. A farsighted policy against Al Qaeda would be to enhance cooperation with the Pakistani military and intelligence, who have reasons of their own to crush the head of that snake.