It has been hard over the past fortnight to avert our eyes for long from Helmand, and from the task facing the British Forces in Afghanistan. As I write there have been nine deaths in the past nine days, and - although perhaps it shouldn't - the fact that one was a woman has only sharpened the media spotlight. Sadly, the battle for Helmand is a good story. The plot is simple, the human tragedies poignant, the pride in victories real, and the photography amazing.

And yet an insistent voice within whispers that we needn't bother about Helmand. I mean this literally: not that Helmand doesn't matter but that we can be fairly confident of holding the line there. We can hold Helmand for as long as we try hard to. As an issue we can forget the ebb and flow of military fortune in southern Afghanistan because, though military fortune will always ebb and flow, there is no way our troops are going to sink.

British commanders in the field are right to say that the Taleban's resort to crude terrorism marks a retreat of a kind: an acknowledgement that it cannot gain victory in set-piece battle. And nor can we. And nor can the Taleban gain victory by terrorism. And nor can we gain victory over terrorism. And nor need the cost in blood deter us: the Boer War took a much crueller toll. And nor need the cost in treasure dismay us; it's a hefty whack we're paying for this but it isn't going to ruin the British economy.

It isn't, in the end, the way each day's skirmish goes that should preoccupy British policymakers. It's what the skirmishing is for, and whether this is achievable, that should trouble British minds, even as we mourn each loss and celebrate each victory.

I'm only 58 years old but I remember through boyhood six huge and sustained campaigns against local insurgencies that have dominated the news in my lifetime, four of them British. They are Cyprus, Kenya, Malaya, Aden, Algeria and Vietnam. And as I prepared to write this column I seemed to remember that in not one of them did military defeat occur; and nor was the fear of military defeat what caused (in every case but one) our withdrawal or that of our allies. The exception was Malaya, which we won, but a key difference there was that most of the insurgents belonged to a minority race.

But as to the others, was my memory correct? Using the Times Archive, I decided to check. How did this newspaper's leading articles reflect some of these conflicts?

It is absorbing to read those old accounts. The Times took a consistently ambivalent and less hawkish line than The Daily Telegraph, but there is a pattern and it is depressingly clear.

At first we announce that the insurgents must be beaten. We list the reasons, usually headed by a “thin end of the wedge” argument about the network of alliances and commitments upon which security depends. We are confident that the insurgents do not represent the majority of the native population, who approve of our efforts.

As the conflict drags on, we note that the insurgents are resorting to terrorist methods of the most cowardly sort. We observe that this threatens our popularity among the majority population, because of the intrusive methods we need to adopt to keep the terrorists at bay.

Throughout we report successes and setbacks, the dominant tone being guardedly optimistic that the battle is being won so long as we redouble our efforts, send as many troops as necessary, and stay the course. Where the ruling administration is not ours (French or American, for instance) we are more doubtful about the chance of victory. Where we are in charge, the doubt caused by stalemate comes later.

After three or four years of fighting, we start to talk about a “settlement”, which we describe as (and genuinely persuade ourselves to be) a progressive and honourable move. We insist, in the immediate, that the military effort must be maintained, but that the battle - a battle for hearts and minds - will not be won by military means. Give-and-take may be necessary. And in the end we withdraw, never saying (even to ourselves) that we are retreating, and wish everyone well.

Take Aden:

December 31, 1964. “[The terrorist] campaign in Aden has been misconceived and mistimed and will misfire, whatever toll of innocent life the terrorists may take, and brag of, at the outset... Any appreciable reduction in the [commitment] is scarcely feasible.”

April 4, 1966. “The hope is that [regional delegates to a conference] will agree upon a combined Government with authority to... treat with Britain on the transference of power. Terrorism will then come to an end, because it will have no further purpose.”

Or Cyprus:

June 22, 1956. “There are many promising signs... the military drive against Eoka, the Cypriot terrorist organisation, will be continued.”

October 11, 1956. “Terrorism can and will be destroyed by military means, but time is needed... Ordinary Cypriots would welcome a new truce offer by the terrorists.”

August 4, 1958. “Terrorism in Cyprus has sunk to new depths of foulness. The gunmen who shot Sergeant Hammond, of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, in the back... are murderers of the most cowardly kind.”

Or Kenya:

November 8, 1952. “There have been welcome signs that law-abiding citizens of all races are co-operating with the security forces... there can be no going back on the course which Britain set herself...”

February 17, 1953. “The Armed Forces... have conducted wide and successful sweeps through the affected areas... the volume and accuracy of intelligence reports seem to be increasing.”

May 6, 1954. “Some 370 Africans have now been executed by hanging and 150 more are under sentence of death... anxiety cannot fail to be felt at the high number of executions...”

Enough. None of these cases is the same either as each other or as Afghanistan. But militarily we were in every case able to hold our own (or better) until the question “can we?” was replaced with the question “why”, as casualties and costs showed no sign of abating and the ingrained nature of our opponent's position looked harder to alter.

In Northern Ireland it was arguably the terrorists, not we, whose acceptance that victory was impossible broke the stalemate.

It is time the “why?” overtook the “can we?” in Afghanistan too. Enthusiasts for staying the course regardless are not without an answer. It is that we are giving a fledgeling democracy under an elected President, Hamid Karzai, the time and space to grow strong. That is the dream, and if it appeared that it was coming to pass I would be with the hawks.

But is it? This, and not the tides of war in Helmand, is the question. This is the story.

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