THE deaths of two more British soldiers, blown up by IEDs in Afghanistan, has brought the total number of British troops killed in Afghanistan to 201, since the Anglo-American invasion in September 2001.
While this figure is just a drop in the ocean compared to the tens of thousands of Afghan men, women and children who have been slaughtered by imperialist firepower during that same period, it has been enough to cause a huge political crisis in the UK.
The reason for this is that the British ruling class has been discredited at home. Amongst the millions of families in the UK, there is no great desire to send young men off to Afghanistan to be killed in a dirty war, which, it is being said, will last 40 years, and which is solely about defending prospective oil and gas pipelines.
What has discredited the Afghan operation is the whole experience of the Iraq war which everybody now knows was manufactured by Blair and Bush, who told lies about Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction.
The House of Commons was told that Saddam Hussein could deliver a wmd onto British troops in Cyprus, at 45 minutes notice, and that their lives were in imminent danger.
The entire Iraq war propaganda has been shown to have been a pack of lies, while the hundreds of thousands of innocent people that have been slaughtered in the illegal war cannot be brought back to life.
Everybody knows that the army was sent to Iraq to steal its oil. Everybody knows that British imperialism is up to its neck in the bloodshed in Iraq.
After six years, they were driven out of Iraq by the people of Basra who would not allow the oil theft to take place. Now, they are creating the same bloodbath in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile at home, the bankers are once again making billion pound bonuses, after being rescued by £1.2 trillion of taxpayers’ money, while more and more British workers are getting the sack or are being repossessed by those very same bankers.
No wonder there is no appetite to fight their dirty war in Afghanistan! No wonder in recent polls 65 per cent of those polled wanted British troops withdrawn at once. Now the military are demanding that the UK be put on a war footing, and that the military budget be greatly expanded to supply the military chiefs with every wmd that they want to use.
The generals intend to make sure that the next government doubles the military budget, while at the same time the Welfare State, the health and education budgets are slashed to pieces, as unemployment goes over three million.
The military and the ruling class of bankers and capitalists are determined that the war in Afghanistan will continue, and the war alliance with US imperialism will continue, regardless of the numbers of workers and young people being slaughtered in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the numbers of people losing their jobs at home.
Their strategic aim, to pacify Afghanistan and Pakistan to clear the way for their attack on Iran, and for the establishment of their control over the Middle East and of Central Asia comes first.
This ruling class is consumed by its own class interests and is driving forward the Afghan war to achieve them. It must be brought down by the working class.
The workers in their trade unions must organise a campaign of industrial and political action, of strikes and mass demonstrations, demanding that the troops be brought home at once.
The Brown government must be brought down and replaced with a workers’ government that will smash the capitalist state and its officer corps and bring in a socialist planned economy.
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