Time for a planned withdrawal from Afghanistan

The murder of five soldiers from inside a Afghan police station has made me change my mind on the Afghanistan situation. I'm happy to join Lembit Opik and the Daily Sport in calling for a planned withdrawal of British service personnel from Afghanistan. Frankly, if the Afghans, as represented by that member of their police force who shot the five soldiers, don't want us there, then: sod them.

But that doesn't mean we should just precipitously withdraw leaving a vacuum. We need to have a re-directed strategy to neuter Al-Quaeda and other terrorist cells. That's why we went to Afghanistan in the first place; not to conquer the country and add it to our "Empire" or to beat the Taleban. Unfortunately defeat of the Taleban has become too conflated with our original aims. Aims have been confused.

Bear in mind: Al-Quaeda is mainly in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. So we need a campaign specifically targetted at them and other potential terrorist cells who will attack this country. In the meantime, we need to set a plan to withdraw our boys and girls from full-scale combat missions in Afghanistan. We're doing it wrongly. If the Afghan police force won't accept us, then it's time to bring our boys and girls home. End of. They're too precious to waste on this charade.