Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Blair in Honorable Company

This is the title of my latest article in Opeds.com:

Whatever Blair’s political future, he has already joined a noble British fellowship by rejecting the appeasement of tyrants. It was former Prime Minister Winston Churchill who mobilized not only his own country against the dire menace of Nazism in the 1930’s and 40’s, but through feverish diplomacy convinced the isolationist Americans the rightness of his cause. As the US military might increased during the war, Britain relinquished its role of world leadership. With the conflict almost won in July 1945, Churchill’s Conservative Party was defeated in elections. The man who only a few years earlier guided his nation through the Battle of Britain and gained the world’s admiration, was out of office.

Another British Conservative, Margaret Thatcher, later restored her Party to power in 1979. The new Prime Minister was a fervent anti-communist, believed in free trade and small government. In 1982, she restored the reputation of the armed forces in the Falklands War, and her economic policy halted decades of British industrial decline. In 1990, she gave spine to the elder Bush’s defiance of Saddam Hussein, encouraging him, “not the go wobbly”.