A rogue member of the Afghan police force opened fire on several British soldiers in Helmand Province today, killing five before escaping into the countryside. The deaths bring Britain’s losses in the Afghan War this year to 92, the highest number lost in a British war since 1982.
The police officer had served in the area for three years, and had been trained at an academy in Kandahar. A Taliban spokesman says that he had been secretly working for them and that the attack was designed “to sow mistrust between the Afghan National Police and foreign forces.”
The ongoing unpopularity of the war in Britain is starting to take a toll, as a top member of the ruling Labor Party, Kim Howells, is openly calling for a “phased withdrawal” of British troops from Afghanistan.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown termed today’s deaths “a terrible loss,” but insisted that the war was making Britain safer. Brown is expected to lose his position in next year’s election to David Cameron, who is also an advocate of the war. Popular opinion shows the British public increasingly opposed to its continuation, however, and the rising death toll will likely only solidify that opposition.
A friend once told me this is a tactic that the Afghans used against the Soviets – secret fighters who are your friend one minute and machine gunning you the next. How many soldiers – in addition to Afghanis – is Gordon Brown needlessly condemning to death by continuing this insane war?
Well the "victims" had the option of not going to Afghanistan to fight an unjust war of aggression, regardless of the Establishment's plans, but they went anyway; so, as I see it, they basically killed themselves.
Tragic, but not shocking. Is there any reason people would think that the Iraq or Afghan armed forces would be any more reliable or combat effective than the Vietnam era ARVN?
"Brown is expected to lose his position in next year’s election to David Cameron, who is also an advocate of the war."
So elections in the US aren't so different that the US ones after all. You get Warmonger A or Warmonger B. Isolationist politicians need not apply.
live by the the sord ,die by the sord