One overlooked benefit of today’s New America conference on al-Qaeda: the free box lunches include David’s chocolate chip cookies. If you’re going to go for a cookie in a bag, you should go for one of these. It’s sweet but not diabetes-inducing, moist but with a structural integrity that survives a nice bite, and filling but not overwhelming. The chocolate chips are plentiful and provide a pleasant bit of crunch, but not so numerous that you can’t taste the nicely buttery cookie surrounding them. First rate. OK, time to listen to my friend Nir, who’s raffishly grown his hair out after embedding with the Taliban.