Ray Watson (Mailbox, March 15) asks why are we in Afghanistan?

One of the last adventures of the old Russian Soviet Communist regime was to invade and try to take over Afghanistan. The US decided to try making it Russia's Vietnam: in revenge for the support Russia had given the Hanoi government in fighting the Americans there.

The Taliban were trained in the latest guerrilla warfare techniques by us at our commando training facilities in Scotland, and the Americans supplied them with the latest appropriate weaponry.

The Russians were forced to withdraw; and that, together with the Chernobyl nuclear power station disaster, forced the end of the Cold War. Typically, the Americans walked away from Afghanistan: leaving it in a state of fractious civil war; which, inevitably, the Taliban eventually won.

Enter Osama Bin Laden, who took up residence with the Taliban there to train his Al Qaeda followers, and wage a holy war against the wicked West. There were many spectacular suicide attacks before their consummate success in bringing down the Twin Towers in 2001.

Need I go on: except to add that our present generation seems to mirror the soft nature of the later Romans, who forgot the hardness of their forebears, were not prepared to make the sacrifices necessary to meet the pagan threat, and were, therefore, overrun and thrown into degradation and the Dark Ages.

Wilfred Gaunt, Leicester.