In terms of the wider U.S. public, Brown will find Tony Blair a hard act to follow. Notwithstanding liberal anger over Iraq, Blair has won a special place in Americans’ hearts.  This is partly due to his many consoling appearances here just after September 11.  But it was also his lucid summation of the liberal world’s case against jihadist fanaticism, which stood in such stark contrast to our own president’s leaden tongue.  ~Will Marshall

Those familiar with the PPI and those who have read my neoliberalism article for the 6/18 TAC will recognise Marshall as the spokesman for the hawkish internationalism of the DLC-style Democrats and the editor and lead contributor to their book of bad foreign policy ideas, With All Our Might: A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty.  Yes, that is what it’s actually called.  It is no surprise that he is one of these people with a soft spot for Blair.  Those of us who opposed and oppose the war take a rather more dim view of the man for obvious reasons. 

Of course, Putin was the first foreign leader to contact President Bush and offer assistance after 9/11, and has been as blunt and straightforward about his intentions towards jihadis in Chechnya as Blair has been verbose and overblown.  Americans, as a whole, couldn’t care less about Putin’s support for the United States in a vital moment, but because Blair speaks with a British accent they think he has been imparted with special wisdom from God.  Instead of being supremely angry at Blair for helping sucker our two countries into an unnecessary war, many Americans are desperately worried about denial-of-service attacks on Estonian servers and regard Putin with dread.  By no means should we lavish Putin with the sort of embarrassing flattery and worship that people have given Blair over at least the past six years, but if we could find some happy medium between irrational adoration for a mediocre nobody and irrational hostility to one of our potentially best geostrategic allies we would be doing a little bit better by the interests of the United States.