A Serious and Chronic Insurgency

Tony Blair says Afghanistan could become a hotbed of anti-Western violence, another Iraq. Well, Tony - duh.

In the now standard Tony Blair on-the-way-out performance, The British PM marked the beginning of his second-last week in power by trying to fudge any responsibility for fueling Islamist extremism in Iraq:

"The mistake was not understanding the fundamentally rooted nature of this global movement that we face and that actually in a situation – whether Iraq or Afghanistan – where you are trying to bring about a different form of government, these people will try to stop us,” he said after a speech on media at Reuters headquarters in London.

Blair might even get away with that nonsense except for the facts that get in his way. The Anglo-American war on Iraq did fuel Islamist extremism but not just in Iraq. It gave al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups a hell of a boost everywhere from West Africa to Europe to Asia. Let's make it perfectly plain - George w. Bush and his lapdog, Tony Blair, personally became al-Qaeda's top recruiting officers. Shrub, in particular, also made recruiting much harder for his own military. Mission Accomplished, I guess.

And just how are things going in Afghanistan? The Harpos and Hillier tell us everything's going great. What do you think? “We face a serious situation … clearly in the south and east there is a serious and chronic insurgency,” Sherard Cowper-Coles, Britain's ambassador to Afghanistan, said.