AN old friend wondering whether I might have departed for a very long vacation used her computer to see if my name appeared in the national press.

She struck lucky and read Mark Harper MP who says: “One of my constituents, Roger Horsfield, tells me that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won.”

At the time he was a junior minister in the war department and, forever loyal to his Prime Minister, begged to differ.

I was right of course, Britain has now invaded Afghanistan four times and has lost each time.

With all the news focussing on the vile atrocities perpetrated in Paris and elsewhere, our government has made no comment on a development at the district capital of Helmand province, Sangin, which some time ago the British army, in months of hard fighting, captured with a loss of about 50 dead and 200 wounded.

Earlier this month the town, garrisoned by a large force of the government’s newly-trained and equipped army, surrendered to the Taliban after three days’ fighting.

Some of the officers and many of the men joined the Taliban and handed over their artillery and armoured vehicles and general stores.

Did you hear of this on the BBC? I doubt it. I learnt about it from other sources.

I am pleased that Mark read my letter way back but the government misled us and is continuing to do so today in what the world’s leaders are calling “the war on terror”.

Waging war is about imposing your will on the enemy.

This means defeating his forces in battle and occupying the land won.

In the past the British army has recognised this by putting the infantry in the forefront and supporting them in every way possible.

I recall hearing on BBC News that a group of Taliban leaders meeting in the open air in a remote part of Afghanistan had been killed by hell-fire missiles fired from a drone.

In fact they had killed six women and a little girl who had been out collecting pine cones to act as firelighters in their simple homes.

The Americans denied this, so their relatives collected up their bodies and took them to the nearest American base.

The drone operator, from the safety of his seat in Nebraska, could have misunderstood the women’s crouching to pick up cones as evidence of their being insurgents.

Mistakes like this must have happened thousands of times.

In World War Two Dover was subjected for four years to German bombing and bombardment by big guns from the French coast.

In the midst of one heavy shelling my future mother-in-law, together with a six year old daughter and two year old son and a suitcase, tried to reach one of the shelters dug into the cliffs.

As she neared the entrance a kindly soldier took her suitcase and she and the children ran the rest of the way.

Behind, a shell landed and the soldier was blown to bits.

There were scores of incidents like this as 2,228 shells landed around the town and harbour.

The effect on the population was simply to increase their hatred of the enemy.

Attacking from the air in the Middle-East as a way of overcoming the nasties is simply a murderous waste of time.

– Roger Horsfield, Bream.