I met a spy at a Christmas party last weekend. He's an honest to God retired spy from back in the days when men, and women, did the work we rely on satellites for today.

He spent 33 years in the Foreign Service, 16 of them abroad. He's been to Russia, China, Mongolia, Japan, Thailand, Cambodia... well you get the idea. You now know as much as I do about what he did.

He is tall, square-jawed and handsome. Picture an American version of James Bond, but without all the smarminess. He is very polite, articulate, well read and well spoken. He exudes the sense of ease that only comes with knowing the World is a better place as a result of one's own place in it. He's one of the most interesting people I've ever met.

As you would expect from someone who made their living doing things that must have been insanely dangerous, he was not particularly forthcoming with details about himself. He was however, really good at putting others at ease. I suspect it's a skill he put to good use in his in his field of work.

The Hostess of the party was his daughter. She told us some of the most astounding things: her father worked in the field with her mother, who taught herself to take notes surreptitiously using a nub of a pencil with her hand in her pocket! Low tech and human seems to have worked much better then than high tech and distant does today.

There was one thing she told us I will never forget: her father says as long as we have an infantry, we'll be OK. As long as we have people among us who have personally witnessed the horror that is war, we will not be so quick to think war is the answer. We're screwed as soon as we think we can fight wars from a distance.

Our current political regime seems to be very distant from that notion.