And do we still need to do it?

As a young infantry officer I was trained that my job was the focused application of violence in order to impose my will on the enemy. That would involve a number of things, including, ultimately, the prospect of close combat - including the use of the bayonet if necessary. I was taught this because ultimately in order to impose my will on the enemy, the enemy needed to feel that I was better than him and that I could, man for man, beat him. It might not be a fair fight, but it would be a fairish fight. It was was about moral superiority not in the sense of the justness of the cause, but moral superiority in that there was no wriggle room to escape the fact that one had been beaten.

History often shows that when the other side does not feel itself beaten then it comes back again (the Germans were defeated in WW1, but did not feel that they had been beaten in the field for instance). The Afghans have never felt themselves bested.

The western way of war now appears, certainly from the reports I hear from Afghanistan, to be risk averse, casualty intolerant and reliant on firepower - often of the PGM type. We no longer seem to be willing or able to get close to the enemy.

If accordingly the enemy feels that man for man he is stronger, braver and better then us - can we ever hope to win?

So, how close is 'close combat' nowadays and how important is that we should get closer?