Published 3/2/2007 Another Perspective = The Myth of Afghanistan By Hal G.P. Colebatch [a lawyer and author, has lectured in International Law and International Relations at Notre Dame University and Edith Cowan University in Western Australia and worked on the staff of two Australian Federal Ministers.] Quote --- *** The very word "Afghanistan" has come to mean something like "graveyard of invading armies." Type "British Defeat Afghanistan" into Google and you will come up with about 3,360,000 entries. It is a myth the British themselves largely created. It is ironic that it seems to owe much to Rudyard Kipling, the great poet of the British Empire, and the distinguished military artist Lady Elizabeth Butler, otherwise famous for her depictions of heroic British cavalry charges. The British have always tended to revel in their disasters rather than their victories (when history was taught in British schools, all knew about the hopeless charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava; hardly any knew of the astoundingly successful charge of the Heavy Brigade the same day, both the subject of poems by Tennyson). Lately, of course, the adversary culture has seized avidly on any mythology that tends to discredit and demoralize the West and Western civilization. However, the facts are somewhat different. The relatively few British adventures in Afghanistan, apart from one-off punitive expeditions, were, like the allied campaign today, basically attempts to support or set up friendly governments and then get out, not to conquer and annex or occupy the country. They had limited objectives and were for the most part successful. *** Unquote Snipped from http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=11092 --- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Nagpur, India