Will history repeat itself? Hopefully not.

Another excursus off the techology track. I apologise, it must be all the sea food I ate over the weekend.

I was discussing this over the weekend with some friends of mine in France - so I will blame France for the audacity of the thought itself.

The last two wars on terror conducted by the US and the one conducted by Russia have all got one common tread, let's see if you can spot it.

Afghanistan: The war in Afghanistan was aimed at getting rid of the Taleban because of their support to the 9/11 terrorists and possibly to capture the mastermind of those attacks. Now the question is where do the Taleban come from, where and how they got so organised that they took over a country? Were they not "freedom fighters" sponsored by the West back when USSR invaded Afghanistan? Wasn't it the west that financed and trained them to fight the Soviet invasion?

Iraq: The first and second war in Iraq were aimed at getting rid of Saddam Hussein, now the question is again where does he come from? Now was he not the champion of the West back in the seventies and eighties and really the last barricade against the growing fundamentalism of Iran? Who was sponsoring Saddam back then?

The tread, in case you did not work it out, is that every time the West intervened in foreign countries especially in the middle east – to look after its current interests - it planted the seed of the next (and bigger) threat to the West itself.

So here is what I am concerned about. Are we sure that we are not making the same mistake again? By that I mean we (the West) are arming and training local governments in Iraq and Afghanistan empowering them without really representative elections. We are arbitrarily giving them a dream and the (fire)power to achieve it.

At the same time traditional weapons and nuclear materials are going disappearing in those countries.

Are we comfortable that either the new current leaders or indeed those that will be elected in the future (or the current leaders once their dream is shattered) will not eventually turn against us (again) - for whatever reason - but this time with stock piles of weapons and the latest western military training?

You know history repeats itself...

PS please note that I did not even mentioned oil and gas... ;-)