RECENT POLLS suggest that the Afghanistan war is becoming as unpopular as the Iraq War. But one bizarre response on the left has been to argue that, while Australian troops should now pull out, some kind of foreign intervention was still necessary to quell the Taliban after 9/11.

This is effectively the position put forward by Greens leader Bob Brown. He recently told ABC radio that Australia "ought not be in Afghanistan because the Bush administration, backed by John Howard, made a huge strategic error there at the start of this decade when they withdrew troops from Afghanistan, having taken over the country, got rid of the Taliban and went to the invasion of Iraq."

Tasmanian Greens Senate candidate Andrew Wilkie, who did a fantastic job running in Howard's seat of Bennelong in 2004, put a similarly confused position to Fairfax: "We would not have been in Afghanistan now if we had finished the job back when we could have finished the job in 2002."

This position is at best confusing and at worst a mistake. The US-led intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 was never about fighting "terrorists"-it was designed to kick-off a new phase of imperialist expansion in Central Asia and the Middle East.

The neo-cons' "Project for a New American Century" has been a disaster for the people of these regions, killing hundreds of thousands, creating millions of refugees and setting economic development back by generations.

US imperialism is the main enemy in this ongoing war. Any hope for the future of Afghanis, as well as Iraqis, must start with its defeat.

The left can't afford to equivocate on this point. The war in Afghanistan is wrong today-and always has been.

Tom Barnes