Bring our troops home and give up bid to impose alien ideas on Afghan people

On successive days, our Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, is reported to have made the following pronouncements regarding the Afghanistan confrontation: 1) the summer offensive in Helmand province is showing signs of success, and 2) we have enough troops in the area, and they have sufficient equipment.

What planet does he inhabit? This campaign is characterised by a shameless loss of military lives brought about by scandalously substandard vehicles and personal armour, yet this mantra-muttering clown sheds crocodile tears over the deaths of soldiers who have been literally sacrificed.

Mr Brown himself has no idea why our troops are involved, beyond vaguely pious utterances about British security, coupled with starkly irrelevant mumbo-jumbo about delivering "democracy" to the region.

Genuine democracy – let alone the vacuous British version – is not applicable to the Middle East, and we should leave its people to their own style of society. Let's have our troops home at once.

ROBERT DOW

Ormiston Road

Tranent, East Lothian

Gordon Brown justifies the deaths of our servicemen in Afghanistan on the grounds that we will bring democracy to the Afghan people. Does it ever occur to him that they do not want democracy, which they don't understand, and which is of no advantage to their natural way of life? Our airmen and soldiers are therefore being killed for no purpose.

MALCOLM PARKIN

Gamekeepers Road

Kinnesswood, Kinross

We are all entitled to our views on the rights or wrongs of our involvement in Afghanistan, but Barry Lees (Letters, 15 July) surely plumbs the depths of ill taste in describing the people of Wooton Bassett as "jingoistic crowds lining English streets to welcome the military coffins" of young servicemen killed in action.

By what stretch of the imagination were local people paying their respects demonstrating jingoism or blustering patriotism? I certainly could see no signs of any flag-waving crowds, only ordinary residents united in grief for the loss of people so young, and for an outcome as yet unknown.

And why does Mr Lees choose specifically to refer to "English streets", as though he is presumably trying to distance Scotland from involvement as part of a coalition of countries in Afghanistan tackling the Taleban and al-Qaeda?

Only someone with a warped sense of proportion would claim that the coffins of fallen military personnel are being "welcomed" home, and Mr Lees should be thoroughly ashamed of himself.

BILL GOODALL

Baird Terrace

Edinburgh

William Burns (Letters, 8 July) is spot-on regarding the second British military presence in Afghanistan. Look through the smoke and mirrors of Washington propaganda to detect the CIA at work again. Since the conclusion of the conventional Second World War, even they can't contemplate a third.

So they've given us the Korean, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghan "wars" instead. And only the "defence" industries gain from this callous disregard for civilian and military lives.

DOUGLAS BAIN

Oxgangs Drive

Edinburgh