The old lie.....

With the tragic death today of six soldiers we get the defence secretary saying that these soldiers in Afghanistan are fighting to defeat the Taliban and therefore to make the streets of Britain safe from terrorism. If we had better Border Controls and more security on the streets we wouldn't need to be in Afghanistan a country that Britain has been to twice before and we didn't win then. The sad part is that with the death toll now at 404 British service personnel over the past eleven years and even sadder still this figure will rise before we withdraw in 2014. I believe that when Britain and the other ISAF forces who have suffered losses withdraw from Afghanistan, that within 18 months the Taliban will once again gain control of the country. Yet once again the government ministers tell us the old lie. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Things haven't changed since Horace's day or even Wilfred Owens. The lies still go on, and young men will die for a cause that was lost in 2001, but as soldiers they go where they are ordered to even if the politicians are completely wrong in their assessments of world events. As they say its easy to get into a war but a damn site harder to get out. Unlike the first and second world wars Afghanistan and Iraq have and are two conflicts that have both being instigated on lies. Its now time that certain politicians past and present were brought to account to stand for war crimes in the Hague.