Monday, December 15, 2008

Brown's Afghan Coat Looks Threadbare

More troops are to be sent to the killing fields of Afghanistan, as Brown embarks on a private war to win the hearts and minds of the public. Setting out to save the world from economic doom is one thing. Trying to convince sceptical voters he can save the world from 'terrorism' is quite another. While Downing Street pushes the Afghan line, Brown's Afghan coat is looking distinctly threadbare. 

What Downing Street and Brown fail to realise is that public and media support for our troops is not the same as support for a hugely expensive, bloody, mad and hopeless war, which no-one can understand. 

The sight of Brown grinning and posing for Christmas photographs with our boys and girls in Helmand was a sickening spectacle, as the prime minister was forced to think up an excuse for being there, while paying tribute to brave soldiers killed in action. 

Then the Orange Party warned, that by using the lame excuse of a 'war on terror', the government is spinning its way out of the Iraq frying-pan into the new Vietnam of the Afghanistan fire. And the public and many backbench Labour MPs can see through the sham. 

Sending more troops to the front-line is only the beginning as Brown obeys orders from Washington and sucks up to president-elect Obama, as part of a US surge against the so-called Tailban.

Bush had only a pair of shoes to duck, Blair can hide behind his faith and no drama Obama will say whatever he thinks the American public want to hear. But the 'saviour of the world' is now grovelling around for excuses to get the public on side and on message. 

The megalomania hold no bounds as Brown now seems to have taken change of everything and ordered preparations for more troops to be sent in time for the Afghan presidential election.


Using the argument of 'being at war there makes us safer here' didn't work in Iraq and won't work in Afghanistan. But, as in Vietnam, the turning point will come only when the body bag count reaches a due sense of outrage. 

Brown, as chancellor, took the country through a false economic boom on a lie, while prime minister Blair took the country to war on a lie. Brown had a taste for crafty accounting, Blair a taste for war. 

It seems the prime minister as master of the universe is setting out his stall out to save the world from everything and everybody. But try telling that to tribal Afghans and global Islamic terrorists. 

And try telling that to voters at this time of economic hardship, when any fool who has read a history book knows waging war in Afghanistan didn't work for the British Empire, didn't work for the Soviet Union and won't work for a country which wants something better than the awful legacy of another war.

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