Oh, JPod, come off it. I’ve often praised Blair for the stand he has taken internationally on Islamic extremism, and you know it. Search the Corner if you have the time, but if you must, try this extract from my (generally critical) article here instead:

“To his credit, the prime minister has been prepared to react to the threat represented by Islamic fundamentalism far more forcefully than most European politicians and to his credit, and at considerable political cost, he also understood what had to be done in Iraq.”

As for your comment on Churchill, I fear that you are missing the point of what he was saying back in 1941, which was simply a recognition that sometimes it’s necessary to keep bad company to avoid worse. He was saying absolutely nothing about traditional balance of power theory. When five years later later, in the Fulton speech, he described the ’old doctrine’ of a balance of power as ‘unsound’, it was merely a reflection of his view that traditional balance of power diplomacy would not be enough to contain the post-war Soviet threat. True enough, but absolutely nothing to do with either (1) what we are meant to be discussing; or (2) Churchill’s continued belief in the usefulness of balance-of-power politics in, for example, a Western European context.