Former British cabinet minister: Afghan war ‘unwinnable’

Former cabinet minister and veteran peace campaigner Tony Benn predicted that British troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan before the promised exit date because it is an “unwinnable war.“I think it will end, they say it will end in 2014, but I think it will end before then,” said Benn, who is president of Britain largest peace group network, Stop the War Coalition (STWC). “It is an unwinnable war and it is a war that has caused terrible suffering,” the 86-year old politician said in an interview with IRNA. He also suggested that the cost of the 10-year old war to Britain, which is officially estimated at more than £4 billion for this year alone, was adding to the country's economic crisis and pressure to bring troops home. “We in Britain pay for every time we make a cut in public services. The money, part of it goes to the war, war taxation we pay goes to the war,” Benn said. Another reason why he believed that the British government would be forced to withdraw its 10,000 troops in Afghanistan was the extent of opposition which the STWC has been leading since the US-led invasion in 2001. “I think millions and millions of people in Britain, men and women, young and old, are against the war. So I think this campaign will succeed,” the former Labour minister said, referring to the findings of opinion polls. He also scorned attempts to justify the continuing deployment of more than 100,000 Nato troops in Afghanistan as part of the so-called 'war against terrorism,' believing it was the US who acted as terrorists. “It is not terrorism if you are fighting a country and they defend themselves. That's not terrorism, that's just a war.” “When the Americans captured Osama bin Laden and shot him that was terrorism because that was going into another country with armed forces and causing a death,” Benn said. “So I think the word terrorism should not be used we should think of it just as a war,” he told IRNA.