Some years ago in the US, my neighbour was a retired Army general in his eighties. A widower, he would occasionally come for tea and I got to hear some of the history of World War II at first hand.
Along with those memories, he sometimes offered tales from his own youth. A recurrent theme was his memory of a girl who sat in front of him in grammar school, whose pigtail he had once tipped into his inkwell. Her reproof, "Now Robert!" stayed with him and the story seemed tinged with regret and also longing. Or so I surmised when he drove to the town where she then lived, a widow herself. In his courtly manner he persuaded her of his lingering affection and brought her back as his bride.
But uprooted from her friends and the orderly life she had built for herself, the lady soon became disenchanted and the marriage ended as she returned to her former home and routine.
I think I was more saddened by the dissolution of the romance and the ending of the old man's dream than he was, for he threw himself back into his life and his small farm where he lived.
This dream of an admired general brought sadness to a small number of people. Unlike this punctured romance momentarily affecting the lives of two old people, the dreams of our leaders and their generals of romantic adventures in the Middle East, influence the lives of thousands and often the young.
Recently in Wanganui, the Prime Minister was asked to explain New Zealand's continued involvement in Afghanistan. In response, Mr Key said that our participation was part of the "war on terror". When we first moved to New Zealand, I was struck with how often New Zealand mimics the US - but the US of a decade or more earlier. The "war on terror" is that faulty slogan invented by the Bush administration and discarded by the Obama administration. To realistic critics it's impossible to make war against a technique.
The problem isn't simply that absurd slogan but finding any continued rationale for the Afghanistan misadventure. I will not recount here the hypocrisies of the Jimmy Carter administration in arming the mujahideen in 1979, according to Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brezinski, in an effort to draw in the soviets to a Vietnam-like quagmire and then condemning the invasion in mock horror with cancellation of US participation in the Moscow Olympics. Nor need I enlarge upon the law of unintended consequence which Osama bin Laden referenced when after 9/11 he infamously said, "the goods you sent to us, we have sent back to you".
The US invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11 was justifiable in response to Taleban refusal to turn over bin Laden. Since the invasion of 2002 the successive administrations of the US and the UK have twisted themselves into incoherence to provide a rationale. The allies have backtracked from any promise of bringing democracy to the region. As it stands today, in a war which has lasted 10 years, and which has cost the lives of 2613 allied personnel including three New Zealanders, the current goal is maintaining stability of the corrupt and undependable Karzai regime by means of counter insurgency in order to deny the return to power of the Taleban.
Boris Gromov was the Russian general who turned the lights out in Kabul as the last man to leave Afghanistan in 1989. On the 20th anniversary of that retreat, he said: "Afghanistan taught us an invaluable lesson ... It has been and always will be impossible to solve political problems using force ..."
Paraphrasing James Joyce, this history is a nightmare from which we all need to waken.