I HAPPEN to be old enough to have seen how the Vietnam war ended.

The Americans had been pouring massive resources in there in the form of manpower and equipment to fight the Viet Cong communist insurgency.

The idea then was to save the world from communism. We all know how that ended. The rotten South Vietnam government was swept away and the world did not become communist.

Likewise, people in Afghanistan have no respect for the corrupt Karzai government.

One ingredient in this toxic brew missing in Vietnam is a harsh, non-compassionate form of Islam going back a thousand years.

Many Taliban fighters have been trained and brainwashed as children in the madrassas (religious schools) of Pakistan.

They have a simple aim – to get the foreign infidel out of their country.

Recently, a Taliban commander reportedly said: “You infidels live to live, we live to die.” There is no answer to a brainwashed human bomb who believes that by killing large numbers of people he is going to be propelled into paradise.

My gut instinct is to say bring all military home as I do not believe our streets would be more dangerous than now.

However, my nightmare scenario is a Taliban takeover in Pakistan with consequent access to nuclear weapons.

Peter Hill, School Aycliffe, Co Durham.