NOBODY likes a war.

Unfortunately, at times, they are a necessary evil and it annoys me to hear so many people complaining about our position in Afghanistan when they say: “It has nothing to do with us.”

I seem to have heard these words before. I was around in the late Thirties when a man called Hitler was taking over parts of Europe by annexing states and invading small countries with no opposition from the rest of the world, including Britain, under the assumption that it had nothing to do with us.

We all remember the little white paper that Chamberlain waved, promising “Peace in our time”, and we all know the result – 60 million lives lost in the Second World War because we thought it had nothing to do with us.

Just think: how many of these lives could have been saved if we had acted in the first place and faced up to these problems before it became too late?

Burying one’s head in the sand and believing it will never happen is no way to face up to the world’s problems.

It is better to cut out the cancer in its early stages before it develops fully and that is why our forces, along with the Americans, are in Afghanistan.

Tom Seale, Middlesbrough.