AP Photo

If the object of the Chilcot Inquiry is, as it says, "to identify the lessons that can be learned" from the UK's involvement in Iraq, what, one wonders, are these lessons being learned for? Are they to enable us the better to invade other countries and occupy them when we go into Iran, Burma, or wherever else we decide to send our troops? For, if that is really the intention, it has to be said that we sure haven't learned any lessons in our current venture in Afghanistan.

Just as in Iraq, we have failed in Afghanistan to marry political and social reconstruction to military presence. As in Iraq, American troops are having to be sent to the British area of operations to enable us to hold on to territory. And as in Iraq, we are having to play second fiddle to a...