Two years ago, when Kurt Beck was still the head of Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD), he suggested that one way to solve the conflict in Afghanistan would be to "sound out ... moderate" elements of the Taliban. The response was a flood of derision and ridicule. His political opponents and commentators -- the majority of whom had never even been to the Hindu Kush -- went on about Beck's supposed naïveté.
At the time, one of the members of this choir of critics was Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, at the time a rising political star, and now Germany's defense minister. Guttenberg had sharp words for Beck, saying, for example, that he had never known "anyone who had met a level-headed member of the Taliban."
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