As I sat in an armed American convoy, speeding through the streets of Kabul earlier this year, we passed an Afghan police checkpoint. 

The U.S. commander in the front of the vehicle turned to me and said: “I hold on pretty tightly to my firearm whether we see a crowd of civilians or Afghan police or the Afghan National Army or whatever.  You never know who’s going to turn on you.”

 It was a shrewd analysis and the officer meant every word.  His opinions were formed after a few tours of duty in Iraq and a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.

His comments came to mind as Britain’s Ministry of Defence announced the deaths of five soldiers at the hands of an Afghan policeman who turned his gun on the allied forces trying to train him.  You could hear the skepticism about this war building on radio morning shows in Britain this morning.

Many quoted from the unsolicited remarks of Kim Howells, the government’s current intelligence and security watchdog but more importantly, the British minister responsible for Afghanistan until just last year.

Howells’ assessment in an editorial published in The Guardian newspaper was unequivocal: Britain should begin pulling out of Afghanistan now.

Howells writes: “Bring home the great majority of our fighting men and women and concentrate on using the money saved to secure our own borders, gather intelligence on terrorist activities inside Britain, expand our intelligence operations abroad, co-operate with foreign intelligence services, and counter the propaganda of those who encourage terrorism.”

His comments could not have been more at odds with his former and current boss, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Embedded in Brown’s statement of condolences to the families of the five killed was a pointed statement often repeated: British soldiers are not just trying to make Afghanistan safer; this war is about keeping Britain safe.

“They fought to make Afghanistan more secure, but above all to make Britain safer from the terrorism and extremism which continues to threaten us from the border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Fewer and fewer people seem willing to believe that statement. A handful of polls this year confirm a majority of British citizens want their troops withdrawn from Afghanistan. And now an influential government voice is adding to the chorus.

“Such a shift in focus would have the benefit of exposing far fewer British servicemen and women to the deadly threats of Taliban snipers and roadside bombs, but would also have momentous implications for UK foreign and defence policy. We would need to reinvent ourselves diplomatically and militarily.” wrote Howells.

His analysis is at odds with that of General Stanley McChrystal, the American commander in Afghanistan who Pentagon insiders say is publicly urging U.S. President Barack Obama to beef up the mission with at least 40,000 additional troops.

On British soil to deliver a lecture, General McChrystal last month set out his arguments to a London audience.

 “We need to reverse the current trends and time does matter, waiting does not prolong a favourable outcome. This effort will not remain winnable indefinitely public support will not last indefinitely but the cruel irony is to succeed we need patience, discipline, resolve and time.”

 He added: “The situation is serious and I chose that word very carefully. I also say that neither success or failure for our endeavour there in support of the Afghan people in the government can be taken for granted.”

But Howells directly refutes those arguments in his editorial.

“I doubt whether the presence, even of another 40,000 American troops – brave and efficient though they are – will guarantee that the Taliban and their allies will no longer be able to terrorize and control significant stretches of countryside, rural communities and key roads.

"Recent attacks in Kabul and other centers suggest that the present balance of territorial control is at best likely to remain – or, more likely, to shift in favor of the Taliban.”

There is a good reason that finding a middle-ground on Afghanistan isn’t that easy: There doesn’t seem to be one.

Tell us what you think. Do you think it’s time to rethink the Afghan strategy and pull troops out?

It's no surprise that French President Nicolas Sarkozy's campaign to ban the burka is now being used by Al Qaeda to justify revenge and death threats. 

Radical Islamist Web sites posted a statement from Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb that vows revenge on France and Sarkozy for suggesting Islamic face coverings were not welcome in the country.

"France, the mother of all hypocrites. (A) Few years ago, France launched a large scale war against our veiled (Muslim) daughters, and here we see France today mobilizing its efforts and all of its institutions, organizing its ranks to fight a new blatant war against our sisters wearing the burka."

Predictably, the message went on to say: "We will take our revenge from France for the honors of our daughters and sisters and from its (French) interests by every means and wherever we can reach them and whenever we have the opportunity to, until France calls off its injustice and arrogance and ends its aggression against our faith."

Chilling and, hopefully, hollow words. This closely mirrors reactions to the Dutch cartoon controversy and other death threats or fatwas issued by Al Qaeda and its associates when they perceive an attack on Islam.

Does this kind of threat do a disservice to those Muslim women who view their right to wear a face covering as a matter of freedom?

We want to hear from you.

LONDON, England – A few months ago I wrote a short item suggesting that radical Muslim preacher Anjem Choudary might usefully be compared with Johnny Rotten. Thinly argued - if widely slammed - as that post was, it's a comparison that retains value.

The real argument, though, as I attempted to clarify in the comments to the original article, is not over the use of the acronym "UK," but rather over the media, and the symbiotic relationship Choudary enjoys with certain sections of it.

CNN itself has not stood entirely above the fray on this, and there's an argument, of course, that this post itself is just adding to the exposure. But I don't see a way round that given the point I wish to make here.

Like Rotten and the Sex Pistols, Choudary knows the media loves nothing more than the opportunity to express outrage. The trick is then to exploit that outrage and fold it back into the greater narrative: the core message aimed at the real audience.

Punk, in its early days, traded on its outlaw status, which gained greater and greater currency the ruder and more shocking the Pistols became. The media lapped it up because they could portray it as a simple story of moral decline and social decay. It sold newspapers, which in turn helped sell records. Which then sold more newspapers, which sold even more records. Everyone was happy.

Choudary and his group, known once as Al-Muhajiroun until it was banned, play a similar game. Last year I attended two of its meetings within the space of a couple of weeks. It's not hard to get in to these events and reporters who suggest otherwise are being disingenuous.

Most, if not all, will have received an SMS from Choudary inviting them to come. Even so, some prefer to come incognito. I've had a cameraman at one event telling me he worked for Hungarian television and a reporter at another purporting to write for the Irish Times newspaper. Both later turned out to be working for British tabloids.

At the first event, held to mark the anniversary of 9/11, the message from the platform was a familiar one. The 9/11 perpetrators were described as "disciplined role models" responsible for a "great day in history." The people of Britain would "one day live under the sharia – so get used to it!" More than enough material for the assembled journalists, perhaps half a dozen in number, to get their story in the paper.

At the next event, a week or so later, this time highlighting "Muslim Youth - Spark of the Fire," those very news stories arising from the first meeting were brandished from the platform like evidence planted on a dupe: "See how they twist our words! This is not a war on terror, this is a war on Muslims!"

Choudary's expertise in all of this has come to the fore yet again with the excessive coverage given to the protest in Luton last week during the parade by British soldiers returned from Afghanistan. A small, though provocative, demonstration, which solicited an angry response from some of those who turned out to salute the infantrymen, garnered acres of coverage in the press and on TV. The Evening Standard, London's main local newspaper, even devoted three pages to an interview with Choudary, including the front-page splash "I want to see flag of Allah flying over Downing Street."

There will be plenty of winners from this. The papers, presumably, were happy with their stories. Choudary and his followers must be absolutely delighted: they can mine this one for weeks, if not months. And the far-right British National Party, the BNP, are exploiting it heavily as well: the story is all over the front-page of its Web site.

The main losers are the vast majority of people - Muslims and non-Muslims alike - who are getting a highly-skewed picture of what constitutes Muslim opinion in the UK. Because no matter how sincerely Choudary and his acolytes may hold their views, their support within Muslim communities is paltry.

Indeed, it's been suggested to me by people intimately involved in de-radicalization that Al-Muhajiroun is losing ground, its followers' heightened public presence over the last six months or so actually born out of frustration over lost momentum.

If that is indeed the case then it's surely time for the media to move on and stop over-inflating the importance of these particular proponents of division and separatism.