Nice when politicians and diplomats -- you know, they who have so much influence on the world -- speak the simple truth."Courage, at last," by Jiti Khanna, for the [1] Globe and Mail, July 29:

Vancouver -- At last, a Western diplomat - Chris Alexander, a former Canadian ambassador now serving as a United Nations special envoy in Kabul - has had enough of the political correctness to publicly acknowledge that Pakistan, through its [2] Inter-Services Intelligence agency, is supporting Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan ([3] UN Envoy Backs Karzai Against Pakistan - front page, July 28). "Otherwise we really are pretending that Niagara Falls doesn't flow."

To date, the Western democracies have simply been shooting themselves in the foot by appeasing Pakistan's government, under whose watch Islamic extremists are spreading their jihad against the Western way of life.