Useful Idiot

A British journalist went to meet senior members of the Taliban. Warmly greeted and told that they would defend him if the Americans attacked the safe house he asked,

Whose side, ultimately, did they suppose I was really on?

He answers that shortly afterwards-

Yet I found it hard, in the end, not to sympathise with some of their grievances, or to disagree wholeheartedly with their central contention that the West had no business being in their country. Most of all, it was hard to imagine them ever being defeated. There was something genuinely moving about their fervour, however naive or wrong-headed it might be.

There's more-

We talked into the early hours, and then it was time to pray. The men lined up towards Mecca. I sat alone on the cushions and watched. The mullah's transcendent singing filled the air.

There was spirituality here, a sense of peace, purpose and closeness to death and God seldom experienced in the modern West.

I marvelled how they were able to plug instantly into such serenity. For a brief moment I envied them.

Frankly I'm astonished that while British soldiers are fighting and dying at war with the Taliban a major British newspaper publishes enemy propaganda like this.