Our man in Kabul suggests that the game is up, and not a moment too soon, yet the commander of Operation Enduring Freedom (they don't play by ISAF rules) in Afghanistan wants to surge into the frontier provinces of Pakistan to go after the Taliban now that it's eventually becoming a priority.

I say eventually because as Ahmed Rashid, in his Descent into Chaos, How the war against Islamic extremism is being lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, tells us, elements of US special forces were withdrawn from Afghanistan in preparation for the Iraqi adventure, even before the Taliban was overthrown!

But despite the simplistic logic of incursions into Pakistan, as talked about by, for instance, the Obama campaign, the reality is that such incursions will make matters worse, when there are real windows of opportunity such as the ANP.

In February the Awami National Party won elections in the North West Frontier Province, crucially the ANP is a secular party. The very sort of party that, I assume, most western leaders would like to work with. Quite how ask-no-questions/take-few-prisoners Operation Enduring Freedom missions into Pakistan will bolster the position of the ANP and even moderate religious groupings escapes me.

Civilian casualties have been the best recruiting sergeant for insurgents ever since one state invaded another, only to be bettered by images of infants killed and maimed by ordnance manufactured and delivered by the "invader".

It may be that the Bush administration does not have a monopoly of geopolitical incompetence after all. Only time and increasing numbers of killed and maimed Pakistani civilians will tell.
Bill Ramsay, Glasgow.

Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, of the 16 Air Assault Brigade, correctly stated that "we're not going to win this war" (October 6). This basic fact must be recognised by Britain and all her allies who are involved in the Afghanistan conflict, a fact which has always been obvious if time had been taken to study the history of the country. As Edmund Burke said: "Those who fail to learn from history are always destined to repeat it." While Winston Churchill presciently said: " To jaw, jaw is always better than to war, war."
Ian F M Saint-Yves, Whiting Bay, Isle of Arran.

Sarah Palin claims Obama will "pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country" on the basis that Bill Ayers sat on the same community council as Obama and donated money to his campaign. Obama was eight years old when Ayers was involved with Weathermen bombing plots in the US. His campaign has condemned them.

Palin, meanwhile, vocally supports the Bush administration, who, while talking about "freedom" and "democracy", supported and funded the military dictatorship of General Musharraf until he resigned in August. Musharraf was an ally of the Taliban. When the US invasion of Afghanistan began, Musharraf warned the Northern Alliance against "taking advantage" of this to force the Taliban out of government. Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid found that Pakistan's ISI military intelligence kept arming and supporting the Taliban long after the invasion. So the Bush administration was indirectly arming and funding the Taliban and other Islamic extremists used by the ISI to intimidate Pakistan's secular opposition and carry out terrorist attacks in India and Kashmir.

In 2002 the American journalist Daniel Pearl was investigating links between the ISI, the Taliban and al Qaeda in Pakistan. He was kidnapped and beheaded. Before they killed him his kidnappers demanded that the US release F-16 jets to Pakistan's military. Musharraf had made the same request to Bush before Pearl's murder - and repeated it at another meeting afterwards.

Bush rewarded the murder by giving Musharraf the F-16s. Musharraf refused to extradite the kidnappers' leader - Omar Sheikh of the ISI-backed Harkat Ul Ansar.
Duncan McFarlane, Braidwood, Carluke.