May Be the Booze Talking: I think Blair's speech to Congress yesterday will be be seen, years from now, as analagous to Churchill's Iron Curtain speech in Missouri. Both Blair and Churchill, eloquent men, came to define a threat to the world -- and to America in particular, because of undisputed American preeminence after World War II, as now. And both men did just that in a way theat their American counterparts could not. The inarticulate Bush, like the earthy and plainspoken Truman, is fully aware of the threat and has a fully developed policy to combat it. (In fact, commentators have coined "Bush Doctrine," as they once spoke of a Truman Doctrine.) But Bush, again like Truman, is not the best herald of the policy.

As I've said before, we're lucky to have Blair on our side, since every cause needs a persuasive rhetorician. This doesn't mean that the cause of fighting terrorism is reliant upon convincing oratory -- Bush's approval ratings prove that most of the U.S. intuitively understands the cause, even when Bush can barely grunt out a coherent thought. But Blair's speech expressed a nuanced foreign policy that the world needs to hear. He unequivocally supported Bush's "in coalition if we can, alone if we must" plank, but in a way asked Europe -- clearly -- why make us go alone on what amounts to the rather petty principle of trying to "balance" U.S. power? Yes, he threw in the sop to the French that the U.S. must recognize "partnership built on persuasion, not command." But anyone thinking this was a cuddle-up-to-the-weasels speech missed this part:

The Security Council should be reformed. We need a new international regime on the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction. And we need to say clearly to United Nations members: "If you engage in the systematic and gross abuse of human rights in defiance of the UN charter, you cannot expect to enjoy the same privileges as those that conform to it."

This is not Euro-boilerplate. Keep in mind, too, that although Blair was speaking to Congress, his real "audience" was Europe, and the UK in particular. This was a speech by a PM facing serious troubles in his own party, an effete opposition, a hostile continent, and a BBC that fancies itself the Ken Starr of the WMD mystery -- and still he was unabashedly pro-American.

It's been said before, but Blair came to terms with his predicament early on, and decided that he'd rather fall to a no-confidence vote than to become history's next Chamberlain. Here he is yesterday, re-expressing that very sentiment, with a slightly different spin that rebukes the critics asking for weapons caches:

Can we be sure that terrorism and weapons of mass destruction will join together? Let us say one thing: If we are wrong, we will have destroyed a threat that at its least is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive.

But if our critics are wrong, if we are right, as I believe with every fiber of instinct and conviction I have that we are, and we do not act, then we will have hesitated in the face of this menace when we should have given leadership. That is something history will not forgive.

Of course, the little putz couldn't resist a chance to work in Kyoto. I think that was off message, off base, off the rails -- and not just because I think Kyoto is economic suicide (and environmentally ineffective economic suicide at that). It inserted a petty tone, a gratuitous policy point, into the speech. With so much focus on the mideast lately, you tend to forget (unless you get the Connie) that the hawkish Blair is quite a pro-EU lefty. But bravissimo anyway.