At the risk of sounding American I want to indulge in a little patriotic military worship. The Royal Anglian Regiment has just returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan where they are said to have experienced some of the toughest fighting in the regiment’s history.

Six hundred men and women went in, nine were killed and fifty-seven were wounded.

If I am looking for signs of hope in East Anglia then here I have it. Teenagers and young adults from Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire travelled half way around the world to fight in one of the most important wars of recent decades. It is surely no exaggeration to say that the whole future of the world depends on the success of the west in its efforts to rebuild Afghanistan and to cleanse it of an evil like no other. That people my own age from Ipswich and the local area were involved in such an endeavour makes me immensely proud and restores my faith in all that we stand for.

This is a war worth winning.