Afghanistan

T S Eliot once famously criticized 'doing the right deed for the wrong reason' and this is the position in which Britain and the US find themselves in Afghanistan.

Despite an increasingly negative civilian population on both sides of the Atlantic and, I suspect, in Afghanistan, there are many reasons for western military involvement in this country. But whether many of these have to do with Brown's assertion - made in a speech this morning - that fighting the Taliban on the North West Frontier is at the same time weakening Al Qaeda and defending London (for example) from terrorist attacks, is questionable.

Brown's and, indeed, Obama's problems hark back to the 'attack anything' hysteria that swept through the US after 9/11 reinforced, in the UK, by 7/7. And Afghanistan was the focal point of said attacks. The maintenance of troups in that country therefore depends, politically speaking, on the continuing justification of the claims that the attacks have indeed reduced the likehihood of domestic terrorism.

Except, of course, that Pakistan is the spanner in the works. They - or at least what remains of their political and military structures after the past few weeks - are supposed to be on our side yet there is no doubt that British terrorists (the majority of whom hold British passports) are more usually linked to Pakistan than to Afghanistan and that Pakistani madrassas have been shown to be hotbeds of anti-Western extremism.

But with all this, we should repeat that military involvement in Afghanistan is right (if not politically right) because such involvement is improving the lives and the longer-term prospects of many of the native population and, in particular, the women. For all their failings, and the Fort Hood massacre of yesterday is a stark case in point, established Western democracies have a lot to say to tribal and/or antidemocratic government structures particularly those predicated upon forcing one set of views or religious beliefs on weaker groups within that society.

Before Tamberlaine mashed it some 600 years ago, Afghanistan was a thriving and culturally diverse region (if not country) and as the British found to their cost in the nineteenth century and the Russians in the latter part of the twentieth century, what the inhabitants these days lack in formal education or culture (in western terms) they surely make up for in bloody-mindedness.

So there's a strong populus who should be helped and supported. True Aghans don't like the Taliban. And certainly the inhabitants of Kabul do not want a quick return to the recent anti-university, anti-music, anti-female, pro-medieval punishments regime of the very recent past.

Of course the western powers (such as they are) can't involve themselves as defenders of the right everywhere despite the fact there are many countries or regions whose weaker citizens might benefit from such intervention.

But given we are in Afghanistan, let's stay in Afghanistan and see this one through even if, as predicted by former ambassador Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, it takes 30 years.