Afghan successes

Dr JOHN Cameron (Letters, 3 March) argues that Nato has been wasting its time in Afghanistan and defeat is inevitable. I would urge him to read Khaled Hosseini’s novels The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. I know they are fiction, but all the evidence suggests Hosseini’s contention is correct: that the Taleban are a bunch of thugs who ruled over a horrendous regime that had to be confronted.

Although the defeat of this thuggery will never be easy or even total, it is incontestable that Afghanistan is today, for the vast majority of its people, a far better place than it was when it was ruled by the Taleban.

And this does not even take account of the fact that the country has been cleared of al-Qaeda, making the world safer for all of us. I would remind Dr Cameron and his fellow appeasers that there has been no repeat of 9/11, 7/7, Madrid or Bali. The tragedy for the poor people of Syria is that the fuss created by the “anti-war” lobby gives encouragement to the thugs of this world and makes intervention to save the people of Homs so much harder than it would be if people didn’t complain so much when we do intervene.

Brian Carson

Belmont Gardens

Edinburgh