Leading article: Afghanistan must not be Britain's Vietnam

No war is like another, and the Iraq war is not like Vietnam. The mission in Afghanistan is even less so. But the US involvement in Indo-China casts a long shadow, and the lessons learned there should still guide us. Of course, the main military concern of Gordon Brown, as he recalibrates the British government's position on two war fronts, should be our obligations to the Iraqi and Afghan people, and to international security. But another issue for the long term is that of maintaining the bond of trust between the British people and the armed forces who risk their lives on our behalf. And the lesson from Vietnam is that American society has been damaged by the growth of a generation of embittered veterans.

Plainly, the numbers of British service people involved in Iraq and Afghanistan are smaller but the solemnity of our obligation to them and their families is just as deep.

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Three months ago, The Independent on Sunday drew attention to the terms of the Military Covenant, the deal between the nation and its armed forces, The current version published by the Ministry of Defence sets out "the mutual obligation between the nation, the Army and each individual soldier". In return for what we ask of them, soldiers are entitled to the resources to do the job, to be cared for if injured, and to know that their families would be looked after if they die.

These entitlements are easy to take for granted, not least because no one in a position of responsibility would ever say that the troops should not be given the arms and equipment they need, or that they and their families should be neglected. Yet the implications are expensive, and they are long term. When Tony Blair made his promise to the people of Afghanistan in 2001 that we would see the job through, it was the right thing to say, but it was also – and remains – the right thing to do. We have criticised the former prime minister for his failure to follow through on those words – in particular for his decision to join the invasion of Iraq. That was an error of judgement in its own right, but it was also a disastrous distraction from the commitment in Afghanistan. The overstretch now suffered by our armed forces is testament to that.

If one of Mr Blair's mistakes was to try to do too much, the much more common and less visible mistake has been the eagerness of so many countries to do too little. When the Taliban were driven out six years ago, all members of the UN underwrote the implied promise to the people of Afghanistan that their country would be delivered from warlordism permanently.

In any event, Britain should fulfil its obligations. As we have argued, this means redeploying from Iraq as quickly as possible. It means adapting military strategy to the changing situation in Afghanistan, adjusting to the reality of the long haul, and resourcing the troops fully. But the real implications are even more long term than that.

As we report today, the survivability of modern warfare poses a new challenge for the long-term medical care of soldiers returning from the battlefield. One of the reasons for this is the excellence of medical treatment in the field, but that only makes the transition to civilian healthcare back home more marked. Although attitudes today are changing from the stiff upper lip approach to, for example, post-traumatic stress disorder, they need to change further and faster. It is not so long ago that the MoD was fighting a rearguard action against accepting the existence of Gulf War Syndrome, for fear of the open-ended financial consequences.

As Mr Brown says, defence spending has increased in recent years, but much of that has been devoted to big-ticket items such as fighter jets and ships, rather than to the new priorities of counter-insurgency warfare – or to the costs of long-term care for the injured.

Of course, this newspaper welcomes the change of tone of Mr Brown's new government. Douglas Alexander, the Secretary of State for International Development, spoke last week in Washington of a foreign policy based on multilateralism rather than unilateralism and "a rules-based international system". And Lord Malloch-Brown, the new junior Foreign Office minister, said: "There will be lots of exciting things to do with Sarkozy and Merkel and other European leaders as well as strengthening our transatlantic relations."

A little fresh air between the Bush administration and the Brown government will be healthy, but it is not a policy. Britain's commitment in Afghanistan is for the long term, and our pledge to our own soldiers, and to their families, is longer term still. They are commitments that must be honoured.