Moving reminder of a pointless war

NORMALLY, I might be a bit cool about a movie such as Military Wives, which dramatises the foundation and success of a choir of women worrying at home, as their soldier husbands face danger far away in Afghanistan. It barely brushes against the other problem – that it was very hard to work out what those soldiers were risking their lives for.

But the film – pictured above – moved me because it reminded me very strongly of that stupid, utterly pointless war whose victims often returned home in their flag-wrapped coffins, along a road not far from where I live. I went, whenever possible, to stand with my head bowed as they went past, while silently cursing the governments that had sent them there.

I notice that a group of senior officers and MPs have recently written to The Times daftly attacking the new peace deal in Afghanistan – which might at last get Western troops out of a place they should never have entered.

In some way, apparently, the deal will tarnish the memories of the British dead. Idiotically, they wrote: ‘These hasty negotiations may compromise the Afghan people and the gains that they have made in the past 19 years. They do not want to surrender women’s rights, freedom of speech and their democratic institutions.’

Well, do you know what? I don’t care. If anyone really wants to impose third-wave feminism on Afghanistan, let them get up an international brigade of volunteers and see how they get on. Our soldiers, who joined to serve Queen and Country, went because they were ordered to. The real problem with the planned deal is that it exposes the stupidity and vanity of the politicians who sent troops to Afghanistan, and never should have done.