Slow Learners

Despite more than a hundred and fifty years of British great-gaming in Afghanistan, it appears that some of the natives have yet to learn those sobering moral lessons of the First World War to which the victors' heirs so piously subscribe. A British-run military academy outside Kabul has undergone minor shock and awe, resulting in the highest-ranking demise of an American officer since the start of the present crusade; generals being less easy to find on the field of battle than on the field of Mission Accomplished. The culprit was apparently a native officer; which shows that, whatever lessons may have been learned since the First World War, some people have yet to absorb the lessons of the Sepoy Mutiny.