Michael Russell: The lesson from Afghanistan for an independent Scotland

Yet any proper analysis will need time and distance even if the almost wilful refusal to learn from the long tragically damaging history of external involvement in Afghanistan is already striking.

Consequently despite the rush to judgment from all sides, the apocryphal response of one-time Chinese premier Zhou Enlai to a question about the effects of the French Revolution – he is supposed to have said “it is too early to tell” – is about right for now. In addition, the American response of back-turning isolationism is nothing new. America has regularly put “America first” (that is, to be fair, a natural in statecraft for any nation), although its history has included periods of great generosity as well as times of great selfishness. We are simply seeing the cycle continue.

Nor is there much point in repeating the obvious closer to home. No-one could be surprised by the failure of Boris Johnson and his Cabinet to live up to their heavy responsibilities in a time of crisis. The UK Prime Minister is an incompetent, devious liar and his Foreign Secretary is an equally nasty piece of work. I know from experience that he is a bully with a synthetic politeness which evaporates when challenged, and interested only in himself.

In fact, the former MSP and now UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace (above) is about the only Tory in ministerial office who has come through the last week with a reputation not totally shredded, as opposed to some Conservative backbench MPs who have been viscerally honest about the shortcomings of their leaders.

However, if there are plaudits going they should be given to those on the ground in Kabul who have shown great dedication to the people among whom they were working.

Praise should also go to the Irish Ambassador to the UN, Geraldine Byrne Nason who spoke from the heart in the Security Council, articulating the humanity of a small outward-looking nation playing a role on the world stage.

Something she said gets to the immediate root of the matter. Addressing the women of Afghanistan directly – the women, as she put it, who were “at the airport with their children and families trying to find a way out, the women hiding in their homes, the women sleeping in the streets, the women still fighting for peace and human rights though it may risk their lives” – she told them not only that the “fear, indignation and sense of betrayal you feel” was understood, but also that it was “righteous”.

READ MORE: Lesley Riddoch: Is the Tories' claim 'no-one saw Afghan crisis coming' true?

“Righteous” is just the word, full of resonance and truth.

The women – and men – who have been betrayed by arrogant Western politics, by UK Tory shabby incompetence, and by a deliberate refusal to pay back debts of loyalty and trust are right – absolutely right – to feel angry. We should feel angry too, angry that it has been done in our name and sometimes even with our agreement, active or passive.

Angry with ourselves in other words.

But then we have to do something with that anger if we are to be the human beings we can be.

There is no situation in Scottish politics that cannot be demeaned and cheapened by the intervention of Ian Smart, the former chair of Scottish Labour. But his remark this week about taking in refugees, although meant to goad the people he calls “racist scum” (he means every member of the SNP by the way) was unintentionally helpful.

We do need to open our hearts, wallets and borders to those who have been let down. Not to put them in some ghetto but to involve them in our communities in exactly the way that has worked so well on the Island of Bute where the Syrian refugees who arrived at the end of December 2015, in the most appalling weather, have made a huge and vital contribution to what is now their community.

READ MORE: Women and girls condemned once again to a nightmare by Taliban in Afghanistan

There were empty houses on Bute which were available and although there was a little fear at the start in some quarters it was quickly blown away by good community leadership and excellent support by officials of Argyll and Bute Council.

A normal nation like, for example Canada, would just get on and do that. We have the space, particularly in parts of Scotland suffering depopulation and we even have the need, given the effects of Brexit.

Moreover, it is inevitable that the self-styled big-hearted gesture announced by the Prime Minister will turn out to be empty. Not only is the total offered far too small, but there is, you can be sure, no intention of honouring even that once the publicity has died down.

So we need to keep this issue alive. We can repeat our national commitment to significant numbers, we can start the process of preparation, we can encourage charities to raise funds for it and we can revisit it publicly again and again.

And we can use it as yet another illustration of how important it is to be able to make our own choices, which is what independence is about. In this case the choice is to be the type of community, as a nation, which was described by the then editor of the local paper on Bute in a leader when the Syrians first arrived.

“I want Bute to be a place,” Craig Borland wrote, “where people who come here with little more than the clothes they are standing in can feel safe and at home.”

That is what we should all want for Scotland.

This week we have witnessed the immense power of human beings to do harm. Scotland needs to remind itself and the world – as the Irish have done – that human beings can do good too.