Nick Clegg says Afghanistan is "turning a corner" during visit to British troops

Comments

[MrSpiggot]

Wrong on many levels.
Petraeus is again paying the locals not to attack the foreign occupiers, as he did in western Iraq.
Afghans are far too wily to miss an opportunity to make cash, but they have zero loyalty to Karzai and his gang of drug lords, gun runners, warlords, and woman haters.

[Bruce]

and what happens when we leave? back to growing poppies. Meanwhile in five years our presence is going to upset a lot of people and radicalise more terrorists. We are not going to win. This is vietnam again. Fighting wars in other people's countries never works unless there are clear objectives, a national government with the support of the majority of the people and a clear identification of when the war is won. At the moment the enemy is moving back and forward across the various borders. We are wasting our forces being there and putting them at risk. There is no definition of a finishing point where the opposition is beaten.

[Malcolm Butt]

The problem any occuping forces have in democracies is that the objective and the Political support change over time. Going into an endless war was never going to be a popular thing to do, what is the objective there at the moment as the original one seems to be rather blurred. Sure they changed the regieme but Bin Laden is still at large or at the very least his followers.