Kabul 30 years ago, and Kabul today. Have we learned nothing?

Robert Fisk: 'Terrorists' were in Soviet sights; now they are in the Americans'.

I sit on the rooftop of the old Central Hotel – pharaonic-decorated elevator, unspeakable apple juice, sublime green tea, and armed Tajik guards at the front door – and look out across the smoky red of the Kabul evening. The Bala Hissar fort glows in the dusk, massive portals, the great keep to which the British army should have moved its men in 1841. Instead, they felt the king should live there and humbly built a cantonment on the undefended plain, thus leading to a "signal catastrophe".
Kabul 30 years ago, and Kabul today. Have we learned nothing?
Letters: Fighting in Afghanistan