Reading these comments in their full context, I sympathize with their message. Indeed neither our interests nor those of any nation are served by an indefinite commitment to enforced civil development of a backward and far away land in which we are unwelcome; rather we would wish to stay only to the extent and for so long as is necessary to deal with critical threats to our security. And the judgments that have led to such a lengthy stay in Afghanistan are questionable, to say the least.
Yet the public airing of these sentiments, coupled with the immediate distancing from the US set out in his earlier public statements, smacks of leaving a friend in the lurch. Mr Hague would be well advised to use caution in the future; treaties are little more than bits of paper if they are not backed up by public sentiment and the willingness, say, to put New York at risk to redress an attack on London, is a highly uncertain and contingent thing in any event, let alone in the context of remarks like these.
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