By advancing freedom in the greater Middle East, we help end a cycle of dictatorship and radicalism that brings millions of people to misery and brings danger to our own people.

The stakes in that region could not be higher. If the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation and anger and violence for export. And as we saw in the ruins of two towers, no distance on the map will protect our lives and way of life. If the greater Middle East joins the democratic revolution that has reached much of the world, the lives of millions in that region will be bettered, and a trend of conflict and fear will be ended at its source...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/britain-should-pull-out-of-afghanistan-says-gorbachev-2226897.html - Oh really!

Mikhail Gorbachev, the former president of the Soviet Union, has called for fundamental change to world politics against the background of uprisings across North Africa, saying that the will of the people can no longer be ignored.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Independent on Sunday, marking his 80th birthday on Wednesday, Mr Gorbachev also calls on David Cameron to withdraw British troops from Afghanistan. And, in comments that risk provoking outrage in the US, he portrays the war against Islam as a conflict partly of the US's own making.

"It's called the historical and political boomerang," he says, referring to the US's secret funding of Islamic extremists during the 1980s, when the Americans were fighting communism. "[The Americans] were working in secret with those forces with whom they are now fighting. They should accept their part of the blame. Let them say so. I think God has some mechanism that he uses to punish those that make mistakes."