What is there to gain by staying in Afghanistan until 2014 and beyond?

[pdq1]

Paddy Ashdown says we should pull out straight away to prevent any more service personnel being killed or maimed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/.../uk-politics-20352134

He also states its a political failure rather than a military one.

[RedGrant]

I cannot see any reason to stay.

[bookbinder]

Maybe somebody is not telling us everything.

[Mammar]

Good old Paddy.
Yes, let's have 'em all home for Christmas!

[tonyav]

Paddy is right, that Country is not worth anymore of our soldiers life's imo.

[Old_Geezer]

I'm unsure what he aim was any more so can't say whether we should pull out or not. As I recall it was to get rid of al-Qaeda training camps ? They must have gone long ago.

[chrissa1]

Get them home NOW. We are meant to be staying in to train up the Afghan Forces, but how many of our soldiers have been killed by these so-called police officers?
It's not working!!

[emmie]

no reason to go there in the first place, and anyone who thinks interfering in Syria, needs their head examining.

[mightyWBA]

He's right..Been saying it for years.
We don't belong there and never will..Same goes for Libya,Tunisia,Iran,Iraq,Syria and the whole Middle East..Let their God sort it out.

[Brenden]

Trouble is WBA the whole of the middle east is a tinder box, now we have Hamas and Israel the bottom line is this will be a war against Islamic extremism that will probably involve the whole of western society.

[emmie]

which is what some have been saying for a long while. An acquaintance many moons ago said this would happen, he was a Middle East correspondent, well known journalist.

[bazwillrun]

Hypothetically if we had gone in monday and wiped out all al-qada , and on tuesday trained up all their police army etc, and on wednesday rebuilt the place and on Thursday said goodbye and shipped all our troops out then on friday al-qada would start moving back in.

it never was worth one british life to go in there, all its done is gotten that jerk khazi on the world stage.

once we are out he knows his days running the show out there are numbered thats why hes been feathering his nest by fiching aid money

[ChillDoubt]

The money and lives wasted on this folly have been shocking and sad.
It's blatantly obvious to all concerned(though those in power can't admit it openly) that this country will revert back to exactly how it was before the troops arrived.
The hundreds of millions wasted in fighting the Taliban ought instead to have been spent on improving and strengthening border security.
The largely ineffective Afghan Police and Army will revert to type after withdrawl and the Taliban will be as strong and influential as they ever were.

[jno]

we came quite close to winning the war, until Bush and Blair had a brainstorm and decided to start another war as well, In Iraq. Result: two lost wars.

[anotheoldgit]

We cannot come out until Obama says we can.

[anotheoldgit]

jno

/// we came quite close to winning the war, until Bush and Blair had a brainstorm and decided to start another war as well, In Iraq. Result: two lost wars. ///

Er, wasn't the Iraqi war before we went to war in Afghanistan?

/// Operation Desert Fox ///

/// 1998 December - After UN staff are evacuated from Baghdad, the US and UK launch a bombing campaign, "Operation Desert Fox", to destroy Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programmes. ///

/// Oct. 7, 2001 - U.S. and British forces begin airstrikes in Afghanistan after the Taliban refuse to hand over al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, blamed for the 9/11 attacks. ///

[whiskeryron]

I would respectfully suggest that the politicians from all parties who advocate wars & send our troops to all corners of the globe be the ones who go & do the job, it's dead easy to sit somewhere nice & comfortable & dictate how many young men & women you will send into danger.

WR.

[Old_Geezer]

The trouble with that is that you may then never get those actions you need done, done. Besides folk who volunteer to be part of the military and train to be so are good at being military. They have the aptitude. Folk whose skills are more political simply may not be good at doing anything else.

[anotheoldgit]

Old_Geezer

Winston Churchill, made a good job of being a Military person and a Politician.

But then they were made of much stronger stuff, way back then.

[jno]

not exctly, aog. The Afghan war began in 2001 straight after 9/11.

The Iraq war started as the Gulf war in 1990 after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. This more or less ended in 1991, but there was intermittent conflict over the no-fly zone and Iraqi disarmament for another decade. Desert Fox was part of this.

But the main Iraq conflict began with the invasion in 2003

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_war

Bush and Blair were fools. They could have genuinely got their names in the history books by winning a war in Afghanistan, succeeding where the British and Soviet empires (and many others) had failed. But they blew it, and history will judge them accordingly.