Giving the lie to platitudes

The well-planned Taliban assaults on embassies, military bases and the parliament in the heart of the most heavily guarded part of the city illustrates the failure of Western occupation.

According to US-installed "president" Hamid Karzai, just 51 people were killed, including four civilians and 11 government troops, which may or may not be accurate.

Far more striking than the death toll is the realisation, 11 years after the US-led invasion and just six months since the previous "unprecedented" Taliban armed infiltration of the Wazir Akbar Khan district of the capital that involved rockets being fired at the US embassy, that little prevents the armed opposition waltzing into central Kabul any time it wishes.

Nato officials brag constantly that their "mission" is on track, that the Afghan army is on schedule to replace the occupiers and that democratisation is progressing nicely to allow Western withdrawal in 2014.

This latest event gives the lie to these comforting platitudes, showing clearly that the supposed mission is in deep trouble.

The Afghan troops that took so long to eliminate the heavily armed forces attacking prestige targets had to call on Nato warplanes to rocket buildings occupied by the Taliban.

Will the Afghan National Army show the same determination to resist incursions into, allegedly, the most secure area of Kabul when it is left to their own resources in 2014 or will it melt away when the corrupt Karzai regime faces retribution?

This is not an abstract question for people in Britain who are increasingly uneasy about the constant stories of civilian bloodbaths perpetrated by Nato warplanes and also about the plight of British service personnel despatched to Afghanistan.

Our political elite, echoing the White House, pays hollow tribute to British troops returning home in boxes, claiming that these young people have "sacrificed" their lives in the service of the nation and have died in pursuit of a noble cause.

Comforting as these fables may be to the families of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan, they are devoid of truth.

These working-class casualties are the same limitless cannon fodder sent off to one war after another by our ruling elite over generations to be remembered on war memorials and personal photographs when the reality is that their deaths have been in vain.

Ed Miliband has apologised for the invasion of Iraq but still claims that Afghanistan is different, a war worth fighting for.

His alacrity in suspending Lord Nazir Ahmed from the Labour Party for allegedly offering a reward for the capture of Tony Blair and George W Bush - which he denies - stands in stark contrast to Blair's ongoing membership of the party and indeed his personal liberty in the face of his record as a war criminal.

Miliband should recall that Galloway was only able to win Bradford West, after previously ending Oona King's parliamentary career in Bethnal Green and Bow, because he was expelled for telling the truth about Blair.

Returned to Parliament, he can be relied on to denounce the Afghan war and the bankers' agenda upon which the front benches unite, showing contempt for the working people who suffer as a result of these twin scourges.