This autumn marks the seventh anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, by British and US troops, and next March will be the sixth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

Both wars have now lasted longer than all theatres of operation of World War II. The total death toll in Iraq hovers at around three quarters of a million, with two million people living in internal exile, and 2.5 million in external exile, mainly in Syria and Jordan.

The total death toll in Afghanistan is not known but runs into many thousands, and both wars have been accompanied by an abuse of international law on a grand scale, through the use of illegal imprisonment, extraordinary rendition, deception of allied governments, and of course the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, where the US president has personally intervened to enable water boarding torture to continue.

Britain has been the most loyal cheerleader for the US in both these countries, and therefore makes us culpable in the disasters that have followed. The total of the war, so far as Britain is concerned, runs into £1 billion according to answers to parliamentary questions I have asked.

The past six years have also seen a huge increase in concerns about international politics and peace, and this led to the first ever global demonstration for peace in 2003 and continuing pressure on the British and US governments.

Tony Blair lost office as a result of the war, and George Bush leaves in disgrace in a few months time. That pressure for peace in the US, where over 4,000 families are grieving for their lost sons and daughters in Iraq, forced Congress to vote for the immediate withdrawal of all US troops, a decision subsequently vetoed by President Bush. This pressure also forced both Democrat candidates Clinton and Obama to declare opposition to the war, and support for a withdrawal from Iraq strategy. This strategy, whilst on the face of it highly commendable, is deeply flawed by the Bush administration plan to withdraw the troops but leave behind a large number of virtually sovereign US bases. The US press are touting the figure of 50, which would undermine any claims of Iraqi independence.

Clinton and Obama have both said the real war is in Afghanistan and indeed the pressure from the military establishments on both sides of the Atlantic are for some kind of reduction in direct military involvement in Iraq, in order to shift the emphasis eastwards, where they believe the real war is taking place.

Afghanistan has shown that the opposition is based on a search for national identity, and whilst the Taliban, who are a far from unified force, are leading the battle, there is clearly a political agenda that the occupying powers must contend with. The Taliban tactics have now switched to guerrilla war. The number of NATO forces are continually increasing, and the death roll rising. The fighting has spilt over into Pakistan, and the Pakistan army has shown itself to be unwilling to intervene in any conflict in the Pashtun areas of the borderlands with Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, back in London, our own Ministry of Defence talks grandly of a 30 year strategy. These two wars have cost billions, taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, and have made the world more dangerous and less secure. The only people who have profited to date have been the arms manufacturers and supply companies, as well as the burgeoning industry of private security firms that are acting more like mercenaries every day.

The real long term winners are the oil companies, who were expelled from Iraq more than three decades ago, and are now proposing to re-enter and cream off the profits of record high oil prices at the expense of the Iraqi people.

The millions who opposed the war in 2003 still feel angry, misled and unrepresented by the British political system. The Labour Party has been the most damaged by the war in Iraq. It is past time that the government learned the lesson and set a specific and absolute timetable to withdraw from both countries, with a promotion of politics rather than mass destruction as a way forward for peoples in both countries.