A costly relearning of Afghan history

How quickly, and how deftly, the government has changed the rhetoric of our involvement in Afghanistan, from a five-year commitment to a start date of next year for a phased withdrawal of British troops.

Speaking in the United States yesterday, Prime Minister David Cameron said the Afghan army would take over operation duties by 2014 and British combat troops would be out of the country altogether by 2015.

A statement by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg to the Commons yesterday that "no strategy is set in stone" was quickly corrected to an affirmation that no British troops will be in the country by 2015. Put less diplomatically, British strategy, whatever it was, is now one of retreat and with no evident goal accomplished — in ridding the country of the Taleban, wiping out al-Qaeda, cleaning up the government, creating a civil society, or curbing the trade in drugs.

This miserable result springs directly from a flawed assessment by the Blair government of a quick Afghan "push-over" that was utterly innocent of the history of previous military engagements in that country, its harsh and unsparing terrain, the grip of regional warlords and the pervasiveness of corruption. The result has been a tragic loss of British lives for the most expensive relearning of history. An orderly withdrawal is the best we can now hope for.