Simon Jenkins on the war in Afghanistan

On the occasion of the withdrawal of British forces from Iraq, Columnist Simon Jenkins writes in The Guardian on the folly of the war in Afghanistan: "In [the southern Iraqi city] Basra the British army had at least a tattered remnant of a war plan. In [the southern Afghani province] Helmand the only plan is to be target practice for the Taliban. ... The greatest honour Britain could pay the dead of Iraq is to inquire into why any more should die in Afghanistan. Why wait for the same number of soldiers to be killed (already 134)? Why wait for the same multiple of civilian deaths, the same villages bombed, the same infrastructure destroyed? ... Brown is to be commended for supporting the professionalism and courage of British soldiers, but he owes them more than words. He owes them brutal honesty in reviewing the political and strategic purpose that is now so costly of that courage. ... Frankness continues to be the greatest casualty of these wars. Those who cheered on Iraq and Afghanistan - from left as well as right - dare not admit they might have been wrong. Now a rewriting of the Iraq epilogue as a mission well accomplished is acting as a lethal magnet, drawing British policy to similar disaster and British troops to their deaths in Helmand."

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