[The Duke]

God bless Tony Blair.

Should we have God bless Bill Clinton as well? Is this sudden love affair with Tony Blair the political equivalent of "Stockholm Symdrome"?

I am amazed how readily conservatives will tear out one-another's throats over the slightest difference, and yet embrace a liberal who happens to agree with them on a single issue. Were I a liberal I would feel tremendously empowered.

If Tony Blair, or any pal of Bill Clinton, is in support of this war, then it's not out of "humanitarianism" or "compassion", but rather because those people who are backing him want this war to take place.

[speedy]

I do not have the impression that Blair's party is backing him on this. And this isn't any garden-variety single issue. It would be much more difficult getting support for this war even in the US without such stalwart support from Blair.

[AHerald]

Your cynicism blinds you.

Blair may support and advocate some of the same weenie social policies as Clinton, but that's where the comparison ends.

He's got a 34% approval rating, and the overwhelming majority of Brits, not to mention most of his own party, are against his position on Iraq and yet he's stayed the course. On this issue he's a leader. A leader who's risking total political failure to fight for something he believes is right and just. That's something Clinton (most politicians, for that matter) is genetically incapable of doing.

[George W. Bush]

I am amazed how readily conservatives will tear out one-another's throats over the slightest difference, and yet embrace a liberal who happens to agree with them on a single issue. Were I a liberal I would feel tremendously empowered.

This is entirely unjustified. Churchill himself sponsored many liberal policies in his early career with which no conservative would agree. But domestic policy is one thing and facing up to a common military threat against Western civilization is quite another.

We were there with Churchill when it counted and, generally, against the will of a majority of our own population. As wrong as Roosevelt was about many other domestic policy matters, he was right in that. Now, with Blair in the opposite position, he is deserving of our support, not criticism over far less critical domestic policy issues or a past gullibility over European unity which went so badly wrong in central European intervention. You fail to even give him the benefit of the doubt that he may have learned something in office about trusting the French and the Germans and their plans for Europe and a common defense.

If you listened carefully to Blair's speech, you'd see that there is a subtext of opposition to the plans of the Axis of Weasels destroying NATO and trying to create a United Europe of the kind that requires that surrender of all national sovereignty to France/Germany/Belgium.

Blair, in this speech, is doing much of what many of us want to see him do, fight off the attempt to turn all of Europe into the handpuppets of the French.

We can criticize the gungrabbing and other liberal social policy of the Labor Party later. This just isn't the right time because it's unlikely that Blair's ejection from office would bring Tories to power. Instead, we'd get a British Labor PM that would be a surrender-monkey of the French kind. Blair has gone a long way out on a limb to help us and he did so for the right reasons. This isn't the time to talk about chopping off the limb he is standing on. Particularly when he is standing against such domestic opposition to be our loyal ally and is in so much more difficulty politically than our own president is.

[VRWC_minion]

Its at least good to see that Clinton and Blair are at polar opposites on this key issue.

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

This "single" issue is a very important issue. Furthermore, there aren't many other countries putting their necks out. So yes, God Bless Tony Blair.