First strike

Dennis Grattan (Letters, 9 July) is certainly right to approve the decision to pull British troops out of Afghanistan, but the point of moral principle is whether Afghanistan should ever have been attacked in the first instance.

Although Nato has no frontier with Afghanistan, this attack was launched on the grounds that the Taleban constituted a terrorist threat in the UK.

The only Afghans who have recently found their way into England seem to be homeless, destitute refugees who have illegally found their way across the Channel from Calais. The notion that the Taleban constitutes a terrorist threat in Scotland is patently absurd.

A situation has now been created where voters have no democratic opportunity to vote for a Westminster government that does not support the updating of the Trident Missile system in Scotland, on the spurious grounds that threatening unidentified countries with nuclear missiles is a form of defence.

Perhaps the attitude of the Scottish Government, elected to put Scotland's interests first, should now be defined in relation to the location of the Trident missile system in the Firth of Clyde.

DR DAVID PURVES

Strathalmond Road

Edinburgh