By Cernig
A grim milestone was reached today - 100 British military personnel killed in Afghanistan since 2001. The vast majority have been killed since June 2006, until then only seven soldiers had died and only two of those from combat injuries. Then came Helmland Province.
Two statements just four months apart in 2006, one made by a politician, the other by a general, help explain how the British involvement in Afghanistan went from being a peacekeeping mission to reaching the terrible milestone of 100 servicemen dead.
The first comment came from John Reid, the then secretary of state for defence, on a visit to the country in April that year as UK forces first arrived in Helmand.
"We would be perfectly happy to leave in three years' time without firing one shot, because our mission is to protect the reconstruction," he told a press conference in Kabul.
In August the same year the commander of Nato's International Security Assistance Force at the time, the British General Sir David Richards, painted a picture of what was actually happening in Helmand.
"Days and days of intense fighting - being woken up by yet another attack when they haven't slept for 24 hours," he said.
"This sort of thing hasn't really happened so consistently I don't think since the Korean war or the Second World War. This is persistent low level, dirty fighting."
..."It's the worst place I've been to," said Corporal Trevor Coult of the Royal Irish Regiment, decorated for bravery in Iraq.
"Baghdad's like a walk in the park compared to here. It's mainly gun battles, fierce fire fighting from leaving camp to getting back into camp, it's like the Alamo."
And at the ultra-conservative Daily Telegraph, Con Coughlin - a frequent neocon shill who did an about face back in April by writing that the coalition should withdraw troops from Iraq - is in no mood to advocate withdrawing from Afghanistan in like manner. He understands, as do US ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus, that Afghanistan is the real central front - but Bush and McCain apparently do not.
9/11 and the high-profile attacks on Britain since were organised and staffed from the Pakistan/Afghan border, not from Iraq. By diverting resources to Iraq before the Taliban and Al Qaeda's core had been properly dealt with, the US and UK governments under Blair and Bush prevented coalition forces from securing Afghanistan and thus enabled the resurgence of Taliban power that killed 93 British soldiers and many others too. Arguably, if Bush and Blair had kept their eyes on the main event, the London tube bombings would never have gotten off the ground. Bush and Blair failed to look after their two nations national security by pursuing a war of choice - and now John McCain wishes to perpetuate that awful error.
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