Our worst export

I think a key problem in the West is that belief that democracy kind of works for us, so why cannot it not work elsewhere. But we seldom analyze why it works for us.

Democracy works for us because we've had all our main disputes, upheavals, and the we can all be considered a single entity as a country. We're not grouped as a collection of feudal warlords - those times have long passed for us.

So the worst form of all governments except all others that have been tried, as Churchill put it, is it a great idea for places like Afghanistan? We tend to see it as the thing that will stabilise a region.

Brown is tying all this to helping deal with the terrorist threat at home. Such a claim is very tenuous - we could probably acheive more by dealing with the extremists inside our country (those that could be persuaded that the life they lead in the west should be fought against).

I'd much rather he say the direct affect which is to help the people in that country - a noble enough claim in itself (just as was the case in former Yugoslavia).