What Are We Fighting For?

The government's Afghan line is lurching from one sickening spinning lie to another, in the vain hope something will strike a chord with the public. Team Brown is now floundering around clutching at straws after the weekend grim milestone of 200 deaths from the Afghan killing fields. But don't expect any straight answers from a clueless Ainsworth and war-mongering Brown.

There will be no winners or losers. Only a lot of dead combatants from all sides to show for the sheer idiocy of this war. And a war-mongering government left with blood on its hands.

The Orange Party has long banged the drum for a pull-out in this hopeless, bloody, unwinnable war against an invisible enemy.

The tide is turning. Opinion polls show the public split down the middle over a troop pull-out but there still seems to be no great 'Stop The War' movement as with Iraq.

The media was quick and right to seize on the grim milestone of 200 deaths. But there's something sickening about waiting for a magical number to renew the debate over the government's clueless involvement in a chaotic conflict with no clear objectives and no coherent strategy.

The war has been reduced to death by numbers, as night after night the public and grieving families have to suffer the spectacle of their boys being brought home in a box.

Useless and clueless, Bungling Bob Ainsworth had the gall to put a positive spin on the killings, with 'wild predictions' that troops will be off the front line within a year, in stark contrast to recent predictions by military chiefs.

Deluded Brown swapped his holiday attire for a sombre suit to sing from the same hymn sheet.

Both refused to accept any blame. Both had the audacity to come perilously close to saying the deaths were 'a price worth paying'.

These politicians do not care about how many soldiers or civilians die. But the sheer numbers of dead and wounded has caused soul-searching among both bereaved families and the public.

Even deluded Brown's insistence that the operation is vital to tackle terrorism has a hollow ring about it when any fool can see the problem lies in Pakistan rather than Afghanistan.

With some neat footwork the justification is spun between tackling terrorism and the joke of 'fair' Afghan 'elections'. Anyone who thinks there can be "fair and free" elections with a corrupt government is living in fools paradise.

And what happens after those summer 'elections' when Brown had once pledged to reduce troop numbers? The death toll will continue to rise, claims of a lack of troops, kit and support will persist. What will be the next line of lies for a long-suffering public?

Tight Mod control over broadcast media coverage of the war doesn't help. The public can see through the sham.

A propaganda war fought in far off lands may be more palatable and relatively painless for the public to stomach but now troops are dropping like flies and the public wants to know why.

War should be the last resort of any foreign policy but has become the first port of call.

Throw pseudo-liberal progressive rhetoric into the mix and the con is complete. We are not out there for selfish economic interests, no siree. It's all about propping up a corrupt government and defending western-style women's rights, democracy and development, none of which is achievable or stands up to close scrutiny.

The public is being duped with the lame excuse of defending anything and everything. Everything except the oil and gas supplies with the big business backing of private mercenary armies and a huge powerful arms industry to call the shots.

There can be no straight answers from a dishonest government, fighting so-called terrorists at a safe distance instead of dealing with any direct threat on our doorstep.

We are there because the public was duped into hitching our fortunes to an arrogant and deluded US superpower intoxicated by its military power. Brown/Obama are propping up the Bush/Blair legacy of the original post 9/11 deal, driven home with every coffin that comes home from the killing fields.

This week is the 40th anniversary of Woodstock when weekend hippies and college kids descended on a muddy field in New York State. Then it was the Vietnam war - today it's Afghanistan.

But the questions remain the same: "What're we fighting for?/Don't ask me I don't give a damn/The next stop is Afghanistan."