How can we succeed in Afghanistan?

Today the 300 British soldier has tragically died as a result of UK complicity in the invasion of Afghanistan. Our troops have four times more fatalities, proportionally, than US troops. In response, the media publish the predictable litany of regret and rhetoric from Government. Our brave soldiers are dying to make the world safe from terrorism. No journalist challenges them with even the possibility that our military adventures, with its occupation and its mistaken bombing of civilian wedding parties, are provoking the terrorist reaction worldwide.

The Green Party's policy is clear. We should not have gone in, and we want our troops safely back home as soon as possible. We are aware of the risk to human rights of a collapse of the Afghan Government arising from withdrawal of NATO military prop, and the risk of that country falling back into the hands of the Taliban and/or the warlords. So we have also been offering to a cloth eared Labour Government the realistic key to honourable success of the mission through legitimising the opium farmers, (whose profits at present support the Taliban), and using the morphine from the crop to relieve terminal pain in Africa. This option remains on the table, though it should have been rolled out years ago.

The conclusion is that Government policy - of whatever colour - is devoid of reason or common sense.