A monster America made but can’t tame

TURN on the BBC and you are certain to hear some voice urging that we ‘stay’ in Afghanistan or return there. By ‘we’, of course, they mean the poor bloody infantry, the people who always end up fulfilling the ideals of political blowhards.

Look, our Empire collapsed in bankruptcy more than 70 years ago. We have no more business in Afghanistan than do the Austrians or the Poles. Nor would we do any good if we returned. That poor country has done nothing but suffer at the hands of meddling outsiders. It was attacked in 2001 because the USA did not dare name or attack the country that was really the origin of the September 11 attacks, and still doesn’t. You’ll have to wait, or guess, too – the reports remain sealed, though the CIA and White House know what’s in them.

I don’t much like the Taliban either. But sending young men from deindustrialised cities in Britain and North America to be killed, or have limbs blown off, so Cherie Blair, Hillary Clinton and the rest of the sisterhood can feel good about the treatment of women in Kandahar seems out of proportion.

If Afghanistan now falls into the hands of non- feminists, it is largely because the USA, in a piece of cynical mischief unmatched in modern history, colluded there with Saudi Arabia to help Islamist mujahideen against the USSR in the 1980s. They created a monster they couldn’t control, destroy or defeat.

As for those Afghans we now leave to the mercy of the fanatics, our leaders surely knew this would happen in the end. It’s another illustration of the old rule: don’t make promises you cannot keep. When you do, don’t make other people keep them for you.