"It's also the silver christian rule that prevents me from replying to mr Nelson and Baikie, as I refuse to make things worse and they inevitably become so, with those two."

Whatever. You are clueless.
You think Afghanistan is about Justice? You are a fool. Afghanistan is about national security. Justice would be to carpet bomb the place and let them rot. Or just ignore them- they doing just fine making their own hell.
We can't afford nations deciding they want to make war by using terrorists- if they do, then we change the regimes who decide that using terrorists for warfare is a good idea.
We don't want to live in your world of "balancing power" and wait around for the unavoidable unbalance which brings us to war. We don't want the whole world to be transformed into the European paradise of neverending war.
We left your dinky land of monarchs battling over nothing, crossed a fucking ocean, build a nation from widerness. We did this because we were sick and tire of your fucking bullshit.
And then when guys started on your last round of wars, we didn't want to get involved. But even then our world had shrunk, technology wouldn't allow us to be isolated. So after WWI- and French being the cunts they were, the stage was set for WWII [even though some thought that WWI so horrible that no one would stupid enough to start another war- but of course that was silly dreaming]. WWII caused America to finally throw out the idea that we could be isolated from the conflicts of the world.
Balancing power never worked. With the Soviet we didn't have power balanced- we had MAD. Guess what? MAD doesn't work when one side is fucking nuts. In a nuclear age balancing power makes even less sense than in a non nuclear age.
Is any of this sinking into to your thick skull?