Morning:
8°c
In a spine-stiffening newspaper column, Boris Johnson reminds us why we are in Afghanistan.
Have we forgotten 9/11, or our duty to our American allies?
Perhaps Boris could be the Churchill of his hour, the only man with the oratory and the optimism to spur us on.
Yet his arguments amount to wishful thinking. President Obama said famously of Iraq that he was not opposed to all wars, just to "dumb" wars. Afghanistan looks to me an example of a good war that is also "dumb."
Just because we have legitimacy and just motives does not mean that we are right to be there.
I am also squeamish about Boris's argument that because brave soldiers have died we therefore cannot withdraw without besmirching their sacrifice.
The honour of those who have died is not conditional on the outcome. They fought valiantly for their country and for their comrades.
If we follow Boris's logic, our strategy in Afghanistan must be fatally unresponsive.
The Army is considering retrenching to heavily populated areas of Helmand so they are not exposed like "tethered goats" in outlying areas and so they do not have to resupply across IED-strewn roads.
Our soldiers died recapturing Musa Qala from the Taliban but our strategic withdrawal from the area will not mean they died in vain. It is the same fight, just different tactics.
Our mission, which has swollen and wavered, is to prevent al Qaeda from establishing a base in Afghanistan.
That is not the same thing as rebuilding the country and may not even be dependent on defeating the Taliban.
Simply ploughing on in our present form, just because we are there, does not look much like leadership to me.
Boris is impatient with President Obama for his prolonged consideration of the options. According to reports, Obama is coming to the end of the "analytical phase" and is expected to choose a compromise of a further 30,000 rather than 40,000 troops.
I would have liked President Obama to have taken even longer to reflect on more radical solutions.
It is not necessarily true that our withdrawal would cause an immediate collapse of the Kabul government and a return of the Taliban.
When the Russians left Afghanistan the sitting President Najibullah remained in power for more than two years until he was internally toppled.
A pro-Western government could be encouraged through levers such as international aid.
We also have sophisticated technology to keep an eye on a potential "Chaosistan", as the CIA terms it. If al Qaeda formed camps in Afghanistan we could pursue them using drones and special forces.
We could keep a discreet military presence there, just as we should in the Swat Valley, but no large-scale military operation.
Boris shares with the more cynical Afghan politicians an interest in keeping a war going in Afghanistan. We have to break free of this doomed pact.
The market doesn't lie - Boris really is a load of pants
Boris Johnson is today voted, unsurprisingly, the most influential figure in London. I have my own empirical evidence of this, even beyond the Evening Standard's definitive list, which is published on Wednesday.
On Sunday I went to the Spirit of Christmas fair at Olympia, a middle-class microworld of pashminas, scented candles, and wooden toys.
I stopped at a stall selling jokey men's Christmas pants on which were digitally printed the faces of world leaders past and present. You could choose from Henry VIII, Winston Churchill, Gordon Brown, Barack Obama, David Cameron and Boris Johnson.
The beaming stall holder told me that last year Henry VIII was the clear winner, but this year Boris was leading the world by about three to one.
This pair wear the trousers
There were many moving photographs from Berlin yesterday but my favourite was the embrace between those two old female warhorses Angela Merkel and Hillary Clinton.
Both have suffered the slings and arrows and both are at ease with power.
Merkel has been mauled by George Bush and ignored by Berlusconi but her disapproving, low-Church dignity saw them both off.
She and Hillary share a style - bobbed hair, inky suits, red lipstick - and an intellect. But what you also see in their mutual gaze is humorous understanding. This really is the sisterhood of the pantsuits.
East Anglia's civilised roots
My Norfolk relatives are a little prickly about being written off as Turnip Taliban by London smartasses over their resistance to having Liz Truss imposed on them as a Tory candidate.
My wounded sister-in-law texts me (texts! From Norfolk!) that her preferred candidate was a hotshot lawyer and that the irritation with Truss was that she did not appear to wish to live in the constituency.
To demonstrate her civilised world view, she added that she was about to attend a literary festival in Burnham.
Her only sadness was that one of the speakers had just blown his hand off while shooting duck.
