WHEN something you're doing is going badly wrong, the options are always limited. You can carry on, spade sinking deeper into the mire; you can take your shovel somewhere else; or you can take heed of the solid 42 per cent demanding withdrawal in Guardian/ICM poll — and just stop digging.

There's no “indefinite” hope left around Afghanistan for Nato troops now. There are 184 young British lives lost, and counting. Inescapably, the long overdue moment to stop has arrived — because none of the reasons for ploughing on makes the slightest sense.

But surely this war is about destroying “an incubator of terrorism” and thus “about the future of Britain itself”? Thank you, foreign secretary. Surely “denying Helmand to the Taliban in the long term” will help “defeat this vicious insurgency and prevent the return of Al Qaeda”? Thank you, prime minister.

The world is full of places where Al Qaeda can hide and operate. Somalia, Sudan, twisting back streets from Jakarta to Casablanca. You don't need the full military monty to wreak death and destruction. A few deluded kids from Bradford will serve quite as well. And, anyway, to quote Gordon Brown again “Three-quarters of the most serious plots investigated by our British authorities have links to Al Qaeda in Pakistan.” Downing Street's “crucible of terrorism” is somewhere east of the Durand Line. Our soldiers are fighting and dying in the wrong country.

In fact, in so many ways, Afghanistan isn't a country at all think five major ethnic groups, six major languages, and dozens of local district tongues; think an agglomeration of city states and fiefdoms that remind you of Europe's hundred years' war; think sadly about sophisticated, clever, resilient people, good at handling 21st-century weaponry in a society whose structures haven't made it past 1400 yet.

Why suppose that clearing the Taliban out of Helmand for a few weeks or months will solve any problems — as opposed to cost many more lives?

— The Guardian, London