Tunesmith, yes I too belive that Afghanistan will unravel once the troops pull out, I don't think the Afghan security forces have the competency etc to maintain it.

But back when the invasion first happened, there was really high support for it here in the uk. The democratically elected government, elected by you and I, along with 30+ other countries decided to send troops there because they believed it was in the global interest.

We are stuck between a rock and a hard place, because we have a committment there, and we can't just deploy troops/withdraw troops on a whim, based on support for the mission on that particular day.

As for the Iraq war disaster - anarchy or authoritarianism, which is worse? Yes thousands upon thousands of civilians died because of the war and it is a huge tragedy. But so to is the hundreds of thousands of Kurdish civilians that died when Saddam gassed them with chemical weapons, not to mention the Iran/Iraq war where 500,000 people died.