‘Today was hard. I can’t imagine what it was like for the families of those we left behind.’

That was an email from a friend who’d served in Afghanistan, sent as the chaos of the western withdrawal from Afghanistan played out on rolling news almost exactly two years ago.

His grief – mirrored across the military and the media establishment on both sides of the Atlantic – now feels a long time ago, at least to those detached from the 20-year fight against the Taliban. Like