Peter Krupa

I’m usually not one to dump on Europeans for kowtowing to extremism, etcetera, but this latest move by the Italians seems like a particularly bad one: They’ve swapped five Taliban prisoners in Afghanistan for a journalist hostage.

“We think that the life of a person is very precious,” said Mr. Prodi’s spokesman, Silvio Sircana, who is also a friend of Mr. Mastrogiacomo’s. “So if there is a chance to save a life, we must do all we can do. And this was our very simple line, and not anything more.”

Meanwhile, Ustad Yasir, one of the Taliban prisoners released, has stated that “he would return immediately to war, and was ‘grabbing two rifles to begin jihad again to hunt down invaders and fight nonbelievers.’”

Morally, this feels like some sort of a puzzle from a freshman-level ethics seminar: Is it worth it to save one life now if by doing so you endanger a dozen more later? It’s a fascinating question. For an ethics seminar.

Meanwhile, I certainly wouldn’t want to be an Italian civilian working in Afghanistan right now.