Tony Blair's envoy attacks Afghanistan war

The war in Afghanistan is "madcap" and "futile" and serves "no conceivable national interest", says Sir Christopher Meyer, who as Britain's ambassador to Washington had a ringside seat on the dispatch of troops there. The fighting is "a waste of blood and treasure" because there is no coherent purpose behind it, he argues scornfully in a new book. Meyer, who was Tony Blair's man in America from 1997 to 2003, writes that: "After nearly eight years in Afghanistan . . . there is still no clarity about why we are there. Is it to stop Al-Qaeda returning on the shirt-tails of the Taliban? Or are we trying to create the conditions to transform Afghan governance and society? Depending on who you speak to–British or American–it is either, both, or something in the middle.