What's the point of the Stop the War Coalition?

Anyone who watched the news last night will no doubt be aware that the Stop the War Coalition held a protest march at the Labour Conference in Manchester. The thing is, besides Stop the War being a front organisation for Trotskyites and Islamists, I just don't get why they exist and how they actually think they represent even a sane position.

For a start they want the immediate withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan. Apparently the country is lawless and it's all our fault, if only we would leave you see it would become a law-abiding utopia. Who wants to bet that if we did leave Stop the War would start blaming us for not seeing through our responsibilities and leaving the country lawless?

Then there's Iraq, they want us to withdraw all our troops from there too. The reason? Well we're there illegally you see. Apparently, because the UN did not give us permission to go there to remove a brutal dictator we've broken something they call "international law". The fact that our presence there now is mandated by the UN is not good enough because we didn't get permission initially. Presumably then we can leave and then go back and that will be ok?

So what if there were a hundred thousand at the protest? So what if Tony Blair's sister-in-law was there mouthing off about crusades. The protest represented little more than the militant politically powerless extreme left who have betrayed their own roots by throwing their lot in with homophobic misogynist theocratic fascists. You couldn't make it up really.