Italy is being blamed for the release of five Taliban fighters in exchange for one Italian journalist who had been kidnapped, but the government that actually released the fighters is that of Afghanistan. The New York Times quoted one of the released Taliban fighters, Ustad Yasir, as saying he would return immediately to war, and was “grabbing two rifles to begin jihad again to hunt down invaders and fight nonbelievers.”

The unpopular war in America right now is supposedly the conflict in Iraq, and Senator Clinton, a Democratic presidential candidate, has been calling for sending more American troops to Afghanistan. If the Afghan government continues on this course, of releasing captured enemy fighters so they can go kill more Americans, it is going to be hard to find many Americans who support sending our soldiers over there on a mission to support the Afghan government.

It is going to be hard even to find many Europeans who support such a move. The Dutch foreign minister and the British foreign office reportedly criticized the release of the Taliban fighters. The way things are going, the government in Kabul will be left reliant on Italy alone, which would be a dangerous thing, given that Italians are the most tempting kidnapping targets in all the world right now because of the reputation Rome has for being generous in negotiating with hostage-takers.

One is tempted to say the Italians and the Afghans deserve each other and leave it at that, but for the fact that the NATO mission in Afghanistan isn’t solely to prop up the government in Kabul. It is also to press the fight to destroy the remnants of the attack here on September 11, 2001. That is a mission too important to American national security to allow either Afghans or Italians, however well intentioned, to undermine. It is a point that NATO and American GIs and the Bush administration could make most emphatically by recapturing all five freed Taliban, starting with Ustad Yasir, and bringing them to Guantanamo where they belong.