LITTLE can have been more dispiriting for British troops fighting in Afghanistan than the figures in the latest opinion poll: 64 per cent of British people believe they can’t win, and 63 per cent want them brought home as soon as possible.

Opinion polls, of course, are simplistic and can be read in different ways. Does the second statistic mean that 37 per cent of people want our troops to stay in Afghanistan longer than is necessary?

Opinion polls cannot sum up the complex debate most people are having with their consciences over Afghanistan.

Hindsight is useless – we are involved in the war, so we can’t simply pull out and pretend we were never there. But if we did pull out, how would we feel watching Afghan civilians caught up in a civil war of our making, a civil war that would enflame and probably engulf neighbouring Pakistan, and would inevitably spread terrorism around the world and back to our own streets. What would such a withdrawal say about us as a country? That we buckled when things became tough?

Yet the public also knows the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan does help the Taliban’s recruitment programme.

It also knows – as the first statistic in the opinion poll shows – that attempting to capture all of our enemy is like attempting to catch jelly: bits will always seep through our fingers and disappear into the mountains. It has also seen the recent elections and knows that Afghani democracy is not worth the candle.

Rather than talk of simplistic statistics, it is closer to the truth to say that the British public does not know what to make of the current conflict.

But, as the intensity of this year’s Remembrance period shows, surely 100 per cent of people want the war over as quickly as possible so that our brave troops, who are fighting for a better country for the Afghanis and a safer world for us, can be safely returned to these shores.