Skipping back across the Styx

On 1st April, Britain's blunder in Afghanistan came to an end or at least largely so, as it handed Camp Bastion in Helmand province to the Americans in preparation for overall troop withdrawal at the end of the year.  Those 'Welcome to Hel' banners can be packed away but it was more than just gallows humour - the mission as grim as Hercules entering Hades.
In 2006, when British battalions arrived in Helmand for 'pacification', then Defence Secretary John Reid told the House of Commons that he hoped in the time that they spent there, the army would not have to fire a shot in anger.  That the bulk of the 448 British deaths in Afghanistan occurred in Helmand bears out Reid's incompetence, a man who had nine ministerial posts in as many years and failed in all of them, surviving only because he was one of Tony Blair's pitbulls.  Yet it was his master that placed the mission in peril from the outset.
The Taliban were routed and out of the picture by December 2001, yet by actively supporting the Bush administration's determination to go to war with Iraq, Blair put Afghanistan on the backburner, allowing the Taliban to regroup.  Thus when the British military pitched up in Helmand, they faced a formidable foe rather than a broken opponent.  It was if Blair was channelling the 'tin gods' at Simla, India, who sent in 16,000 British and allied troops into Afghanistan in the First Anglo-Afghan War - under siege in Kabul they sought to retreat; less than a dozen survived the march.
Ironically, the British held Kandahar - in what is now Helmand province - from the vengeful Afghans, in a remarkable precursor to Rorke's Drift.  But the war was lost and a more prudent retreat was organised evacuating the whole country.  One cannot help feeling that a war-weary UK has had enough and if all the gains since 2001 - elections (however ambiguous), women's rights, the trappings of the West - should fall like the Buddhist statues at Bamiyan after our departure, then so be it.  We don't want to get involved in Syria so it is illogical to stay in Afghanistan.
I follow a different line.  We should never have invaded Iraq without a far stronger humanitarian case than just Saddam Hussein was a nasty dictator (the Saudis were hardly any better but they were compliant and predictable).  We should have got involved in Syria from a very early stage, like in Libya.  Libya may have a desperately weak government but it has not turned into Somalia on the Mediterranean like Syria has and western Muslims return to their home countries after 'jihad' radicalised.  I also supported intervention in Afghanistan and had we not 'taken our eye off the ball' (as John Simpson incredulously admitted) to focus on Iraq, then we might have locked in the gains and not endured our longest conflict since the end of the Hundred Years War (counting from 1415 to 1453).  Because of the errors of Bush and Blair, a counter-terrorist campaign hand-in-hand with the Taliban to snuff out al-Qaeda now seems distinctly desirable if the invasion of Iraq was inevitable (if forever and a day wrong - ahem, Chilcot, where are you?).
448 British, thousands of Americans and other NATO soldiers (Camp Bastion was shared with the USA, Denmark and Estonia as one camp among many throughout the Hindu Kush) and tens of thousands of Afghans have died, not to mention all those maimed and horrifically injured, as Bush and Blair did their level best to discredit humanitarian intervention and Right To Protect (RTP).  I hope the Taliban don't roll up the country like a carpet (and Pakistan's Dr Frankenstein should keep away from the monster it created to counter New Delhi's influence).  The aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal - which the West precipitated - doesn't give cause for much in the way of hope though.