The Romans had a saying for it - "Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first drive mad" - and for sheer lunacy the attack

on Afghanistan takes some beating. Never mind that Afghanistan has been the graveyard of countless foreign invasions since Alexander The Great, nor that seven million Afghanis face starvation this winter, whose already miserable lives will be made even more so by thebombing - these attacks put the lives at risk of many US and British civilians throughout the world.

If, to paraphrase the words of the one-time Hollywood film actor-turned president Ronald Reagan, we haven't seen terrorism before, "We ain't seen nothing yet". The increasingly Walter Mitty-like existence that has bedevilled US presidents since seems to have infected the British prime minister, Tony Blair. The country may be falling apart - NHS, education, Railtrack - but he wants to bomb Afghanistan.

To arrest an alleged terrorist leader and his supporters and bring them before a UN tribunal is one thing but to bomb an entire country is another. By the same perverse logic, we could find ourselves attacking Ireland, both North and South, in order to destroy the Real IRA, UVF and other terrorist organisations - or, for that matter, the US itself for its failure to extradite numerous members of such organisations for alleged terrorist activities in Northern Ireland and the UK.

-Fred Shipton, Bristol Estate, Brighton