JUSTIN DUNN’S ROOM 101 Are you still thinking of a comeback, Tony?
WHAT’S ANNOYING HIM THIS WEEK?
It’s only a few weeks since mutterings spread that the former prime minister was planning a comeback.
The bits of Labour that hadn’t gone stark staring bonkers were plotting to reinstate the only leader they’ve ever had to win three general elections on the trot.
Even this former supporter wondered if there must be a good idea in this, seeing as Keir Starmer is struggling to cope with the mess left behind by Jeremy Corbyn.
The political correspondents got very excited, as they always do in silly season August when most MPs are off on holiday, and Labour began to breathe again. Now, though? Not so much. Watching the news coming out of Afghanistan on Monday was, for want of a better expression, mind-blowing.
Terrified locals trying to grab onto a departing US military flight as it taxied down a runway.
Guns
At least three people who somehow made it onto the jet’s tail being sucked off the fuselage mid-air and sent hurtling to their deaths on the concrete far below.
Images of women’s faces being covered up on the windows of beauty parlours and hairdressers.
Indeed, there were no women or girls on the streets at all. Just men. Lots and lots of men. With lots and lots of guns. And bear this in mind, it was literally only last month that President Joe Biden insisted there was no way the Taliban would retake the capital Kabul.
Yet, amid the falling bodies and disappearing females on Monday, there the Taliban were. Sat in the presidential palace offices with AK-47s slung over their shoulders.
Just imagine for one second that this was happening in London….
For the US administration, this is Vietnam all over again.
A holy mess of their own making, born out of arrogance and thirst for revenge for 9/11.
And a 20-year mess in which we happily took part, such was Blair’s devotion to the former president George W Bush.
First, the allies piled into Afghanistan, where some of the terrorists had trained.
Then the allies went into Iraq, even though almost all the September 11 al Qaeda killers were from, er, Saudi Arabia.
We toppled Iraq, killed thousands, got Saddam Hussein hanged, and still had no idea where Osama bin Laden was.
We still didn’t find bin Laden until much, much later.
And thousands of miles away in any case, in Pakistan.
We did, however, help to create the basket case that is ISIS in Iraq.
True, Hussein, bin Laden and indeed Colonel Gaddafi are all now dead.
But their countries are in a worse state than we found them. Yet Bush and Blair still walk free. After the latest appalling scenes to be broadcast from Afghanistan, British army veteran Jack Cummings took to Twitter to ask: “Was it really worth it?” He was spot on. No, he concluded, two lost legs later, it wasn’t worth it at all.