A lesson from history

IN the dog-days of New Labour, when the bright torch of hope had become the dull fag-end of reality, Gordon Brown proclaimed: ‘There can be only one winner in Afghanistan: a strong democratic state.’

At the same time a Russian general, a veteran of the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, was asked by a British documentary maker what advice he had for the West.

He said ruefully: ‘Find the quickest route home’.

I asked my soldier son, who had already done several tours in the Hindu Kush, what he thought.

He said they were the most prescient words spoken by an invading army commander since Alexander the Great had warned 23 centuries before that the Afghan tribal areas were ‘easy to march into, hard to march out of ’.

I wondered if our political leaders might avoid past mistakes but he replied: ‘Not a chance!’

DR JOHN CAMERON,

St Andrews, Fife.