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A national tragedy, shameful, a staggering failure,

Britain's biggest foreign policy disaster since Suez.

That is how my guest on political thinking this week has described our withdrawal from

Afghanistan.

He is Tom Tuganad, former soldier, former adviser to the governor of Hellman Province,

former adviser to the chief of the defence staff.

He is now chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons.

And this is the series in which I have conversations with, not interrogations of those who shape

our political thinking about what shapes theirs, their background, their values, their lives

beyond politics.

It was precisely that which led MPs to listen to Tom Tuganad in total silence as he spoke

in the commons of his struggle with anger, grief and rage as he watched events unfold

incapable.

Like many veterans this last week has been one that has seen me struggle through anger

and grief and rage, the feeling of abandonment of not just a country, but the sacrifice that

my friends made.

I bid funeral from pool to dumb lane.

I watched good men go into the earth, taking with them a part of me and a part of all of

us.

And this week has torn open some of those wounds, left them raw, left us all hurting.

Tom Tuganad, welcome to Political Thinking.

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