FOREIGN Secretary David Miliband has invented a freshly-spun euphemism for military defeat. The Taliban, he says, has achieved “strategic stalemate” in Afghanistan. He also told the BBC that, wait for it, it is now understood that there could not be a solution in the region brought about by military means alone. Gordon Brown justifies the Afghan war in terms of combating “terrorism on the streets of London”. After eight years of failing to find Osama bin Laden – the primary excuse dreamed up by the war’s architect Donald Rumsfeld – it seems the war is not being won and the balances of power in the region are exactly where they were in 2001. Could it be that the Government is beginning, slowly to realise that the best plan for Afghanistan is: exit?
