Am currently reading Churchill's First War about a British punitive campaign into Afghanistan in 1897.
“Financially it is ruinous. Morally it is wicked. Militarily it is an open question, and politically it is a blunder.”
From a private letter to his mother, Jennie Randolph Churchill, 10/21/1897, regarding his assessment of the British Malakand Field Force punitive expedition against the indigenous tribal uprising in the Hindu Kush along the borders of Afghanistan, India, and the future nation of Pakistan. Churchill was 22 years of age and a subaltern veteran of this campaign. This is the same area in which U.S./NATO troops faught Muslim mujhadien (the great-great grandchildren of Churchill’s enemies) from 2001-2014 – America’s longest war.
Churchill’s The Story of the Malakand Field Force should have been immediate required reading for anyone in the U.S. Government involved in reacting to 9/11. Big chunks of the State Dept., DoD, and the National Security Council, for starters.