I think the answer the first question is much easier than the second.  We are currently in a nightmare situation militarily and diplomatically and there are few signs of it getting any easier.

I believe we should have withdrawn from Afghanistan a long time ago.  It was right to invade and to remove the Taliban when we did, in 2001, as the Taliban government was not only harbouring Al Qaida but was also a clear threat to Pakistan’s fragile state. I was in Pakistan in the late nineties and saw first hand the threat posed to its uneasy balance between secularism and Islam by the Taliban next door.

Having successfully defeated the Taliban and installed Karzai’s government, the correct policy would have been significant investment in infrastructure - both physical and political - across the whoile country, not just in Kabul.  Instead we encouraged a centralist approach (what else would you expect from Blair/Brown or their US bosses) that alienated the people they needed - ie local tribal leaders.  (Read Rory Stewart’s excellent book “The Places Inbetween” for some insight into the political fabric of the place.)  And then we took our eyes completely off the ball by embarking on the most stupid foreign policy blunder in my lifetime by invading Iraq. From that point on the failure of our venture in Afghanistan was certain.

Starved of sufficient military strength NATO resorted to air raids with massive “collateral damage” - ie dead civilians, not just in Afghanistan itself but across the border into Pakistan.  And the political strategy was unclear, uncertain and mostly plain wrong.

Many of the lessons have I am sure been learned, and much of the rhetoric from Washington and Whitehall is more realistic now, but it is TOO LATE.

We now have a real nightmare situation.  To complete the military strategy it would appear more troops are needed, at least in the short term.  But thanks to a botched UN election process there is no credible government in Kabul and to shore up Karzai’s government now cannot be right. Everyone seems to have breathed a sigh of relief when Abdullah Abdullah withdrew from the second round of elections but why?  This was a massive indictment of the legitimacy of the process and has left us with a lame duck President.  So it is hardly sensible to put massive military effort into supporting his regime.

But to pull out immediately would presumably be chaotic.

Worse still, to dither and do nothing, or to do a bit, but not enough, will continue to put our troops further at risk.

So a solution needs to be found.  Nick Clegg set out some useful principles in an article for the Times today.  Our MEP Chris Davies has stated quite clearly that we should withdraw. An excellent article by Johann Hari at the Independent offers more support for this view.

Paddy Ashdown, who Karzai rejected as the UN’s “super envoy”, argued last month in favour of continued presence but on a very different strategy of dealing with the tibes and decentralisingthe Afghan government.

What do you think?