The toll in Afghanistan has been rising for weeks but it took the deaths of eight soldiers in the space of 24 hours to bring home the extent of the sacrifice military families are making on our behalf. Those deaths meant a grim milestone was passed: with 184 dead, more British soldiers have lost their lives in Afghanistan than in Iraq.

With each death, the inevitable cry goes up that we do not have enough troops; that they have the wrong equipment and insufficient helicopters. Other voices demand that we get out and leave the Afghan army to battle it out with the Taliban. That, of course, is one option. At the other end of the scale is what President Obama sees as the goal in Afghanistan, “democracy and a strong Afghan state”, which the troop surge is intended to help bring about. The losses of recent days, in other words, are part of the price that has to be paid for taking the fight to the Taliban.

In truth, neither of these goals stacks up. One is defeatist, the other too ambitious. You do not need to have gone up the Khyber to know that Afghanistan has traditionally been the graveyard of such ambitions. Even the goal of making Helmand secure may be unachievable. While it is right to stand up to the Taliban, the old idea that Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan provided havens for Al-Qaeda is no longer valid. That was true in 2001 but it is not now. The strategy for Afghanistan cannot simply be a rerun of Iraq, despite Washington’s keenness to draw the parallel.

It will mean doing deals with the warlords and it will mean setting our sights lower than exiting the country only when the flags are flying over a gleaming new Afghan parliament. It also means providing our troops with the resources to pursue the fight without needlessly endangering their lives. The parents of Private Ben Ford, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2007, summed it up in a radio interview yesterday. While politicians have feathered their own nests and public money has been wasted on an epic scale, the military has been starved of resources. They believe their son’s life could have been saved if his vehicle had been equipped with an electronic device to detect the roadside bomb that killed him. Many more would have been saved had there been helicopters to ferry them, rather than vulnerable personnel carriers.

Here the buck has to stop with Gordon Brown. As chancellor, he squeezed defence spending while pouring money into his pet areas. Extra cash for our armed forces rose by a mere 1.4% a year in real terms from 1999 to 2007, compared with 7% for health, 5.4% for education and 9% for overseas aid. As prime minister he has simultaneously wrapped himself in the flag while demoting defence’s role.

John Hutton stepped down from the job of defence secretary in last month’s cabinet reshuffle to prepare himself for a life outside politics. His successor, Bob Ainsworth, is ranked 21st out of 23 cabinet ministers in

No 10’s official list. This is no way to treat one of the great offices of state, and it is no way to treat our armed forces.

The government needs to do two things on Afghanistan. The first is to convey a clearer explanation of Britain’s war aims. Generalities such as those yesterday of David Miliband, the foreign secretary, that the troops are engaged in a battle for “the future of Britain”, are not good enough. Wars without a clear strategy are lost. And, second, even amid the fiscal mess, it is vital for the army to have the numbers and the equipment it needs. Otherwise the 184 will have given their lives in vain.