Afghanistan? Send for Bush and Blair!

The cable to the White House from the US ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, for “no more troops” is a pretty shocking shot across the military’s bows.

Following our own micro consultation with the UK public last night, one’s sense of confusion and mystification over the Afghan war only deepens.

Here in the UK the acid question must surely be whether the damage done to communal relations in Britain from deploying UK troops to engage in action which inevitably sheds Muslim blood, outweighs the risk of blood being shed here by Muslim extremists.

To be doing this to facilitate a regime the US ambassador deems corrupt seems pretty foolhardy. The general commanding the US war effort, General McChrystal, is said to be fuming over Mr Eikenberry’s thoughts. He very publicly wants another 40,000 troops right now.

Who would be Barack Obama in such an hour? I’m interviewing the Nato Secretary General this morning, Mr Rasmussen. And what is Nato in all this? A bit part player in a British-backed US adventure? A smokescreen of “international” respectability? A cypher? Who knows? We’ll ask!

This is indeed the Afghan hour of truth in a conflict that has outstripped Vietnam in length – and the second world war, for that matter.

Compared with this, the illegal war in Iraq was a doddle. It was either right or wrong, and most people knew which side they were on.

Afghanistan – what a shambles. Send for Tony Blair and George Bush! Perhaps they know what to do next. After all, they thought it up in the first place in response to a terrorist attack starring a group of Saudis, for the most part trained on the American and German mainland.