Yes the form matters. Democracy matters. When the Weimar Republic handed over power dissent and civil rights were crushed and Germany immediately ceased to be a democracy. Democratically elected does not mean democracy. It is only one of many criteria.
Under Bush and Blair, democracy never came close to disintegrating.

The people elected an opposition leader as a reaction to Bush's decision making. In Nazi Germany that wouldn't be possible without a violent revolution (Or a crushing military defeat as is what happened). Very simple.

They don't go together, as this person demonstrates.

So Bush and Hitler are largely indistinguishable in a historical sense. I thought this sort of derangement had abated with the election of Barack Obama. Guess not.

....but my point is made.

Obamby has a law degree from Harvard. Bush has MBA. To call bush ignorant, only shows your own ignorance.

That's cute.

You know what's disgraceful? That this fuckwit is still walking around making his absurd and dangerous statements and people like you still defend both him and the seemingly endless disaster that is Iraq. He knew exactly what was going on: he knew about the lies and the deceit because he was part of it. And now he wants the west to 'confront' Iran, militarily 'if necessary'! Has he learned anything? No, he has not and apparently he never will. Of course he has to say that he can't regret getting rid of Saddam Hussein but that's just a cover up. He knows it was all about oil. In fact he's a consultant these days for various energy companies and has made $35 million since leaving office in such roles.

The CIA put Saddam Hussein in power and armed and funded him for decades. Britain sold him anthrax, mustard gas and various other chemical and biological weapons and so did America. The gas he used on the Kurds was sold to him in a deal brokered by Donald Rumsfeld. I have a book near my desk with Rumsfeld on the cover shaking hands with Saddam. As for partial reporting, you must be joking. What you're getting is a trickle of truth that is finally starting to break through the wall of lies and spin that has surrounded and still surrounds the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These are colonial wars carried out to grab under-developed countries' resources (oil is only one of them) and if Blair was an honest man he would admit it, instead of pretending he's some misunderstood hero and that history will vindicate him. I understand him only too well and I know that he is a liar and not to be trusted. And David Cameron is just another pretty show pony put in place to do the dirty work of the elites. Heads you lose, tails you lose. The situation in Britain now is that whoever you elect is working for them, not you.

...for standing up for the collective dignity of those that opposed the war. But then you threw in the good faith thing and blew it.

Disgraceful blogs. Global Warming Preaching. Supporter of the war. More than clear where you stand! Your confidence must be shot right now, because I can't recall too many of you war-hawks trying to mediate the tone of the media when your whims were being placated. So now the tone is just too......ummmm.....mean-spirited.

But could this possibly be a guilty conscious taking over, along with the flailing arms of self preservation? You've obviously incorporated Blair's public lambasting as an affront to you. Understandably you hate the hate because you feel targeted and this disdain you have for current state of discourse; the ease of labeling evil as just that, you're a bit....defense.

I"m almost sure that your support for the taste of easy Middle East kick ass was rubbed that wrong way when those lily-livered, anti-war dys-patriots just didn't see it your way.

You sound more like a paid PR rep for Mr. Blair, but you're merely protecting your own hurt feelings of being wrong. I can't see how sending hundreds, thousands of men and women into harms way for amorphous and specious reason as saving Iraqis from their former buddy in death, Saddam, or democracy (craziness). Then using spurious and arcane evidence such as, Iraq and their ties to 9/11 hijackers or ice cream trucks filled with WMDs (Thanks General/Sec. Powell) or a British original: Yellow Cake from the ever powerful Niger, the Southern Spur of Al-Qaeda. ALL OF THIS EQUALS GOOOOOD FAITH (or faith in GOD) to you freedom loving, over burdened NeoConZ.

No, SARZY2, the only thing that disgraceful on this blog (besides maybe my sarcasm) is your feigned indignation and self-pity. It's people like you that set the tone that you claim to hate so much.......now. Maybe the DRUMS of war just were too loud hear it back then, but you can't undead the dead.....and you can't seek redemption from false concern for the very climate you helped create.

to do?

I don't get your point. Unlike the US, the Iraq Invasion was very unpopular in Britain. If Blair was only interested in popularity, he would not have pushed so hard for this war. Clearly this was something he felt strongly about. In your parlance: not a politican's move.

I have a hard time making up my mind about Blair. The Iraq War was wrong on every level and many people died as a result. Yet the good that he did in Kosovo, Northern Ireland, etc is undeniable. His domestic policies: national minimum wage, sure start, constitutional reform, gay rights, etc have helped people.

Perhaps it is too soon to make a judgement call. It took Bill Clinton some time before his reputation improved. I hope the Brits don't have to live through a George Bush to appreciate the good that Blair did too.

Or maybe the Brits need a National Scapegoat. Move over Guy Fawkes. 'Penny for the Tone, Guv?'

Yours is an all too glib & totally unsatisfactory summary of a man & career worth far more than you & others caught in the anti-Blair mania will ever give him credit for. It is a mania that speaks far more volumes about the character of those who relish it than it does about Blair. Yes indeed-- a consummate politician he may have learned to be-- & no disgrace there--I will always remember with intense pleasure the amusement of watching him (before the Iraq tragedy) deftly demolish his weak-knee'd opposition at Question Time . The rightness of his Kosovo stand was & is unchallengable -for which the gratitude of many is well-founded; as was the rightness of his attitude in dealing with the crisis between Queen & public after the death of Diana. The removal of a tyrannical dictator notwithstanding, I certainly share in the wish that Bush & Blair had not led us into Iraq, but it is neither fair nor balanced to countenance the constant savaging of this man & seeing it so lightly & glibly justified. He made as great an impression for good on so many of the worlds citizens while damning himself for ever in the eyes of others for his share in the war that is only now winding down. It may have been wrong-headed to apply the same principals to Iraq that justified the appropriateness of the Kosovo action against Milosavich but a blanket damning of Tony Blair's entire career is simply NOT appropriate.

Time has proved your mother quite wrong about Mrs. Thatcher, and will likely eventually do the same for Tony Blair.

Putting aside the Iraq War, Tony brought the Labour party back to electability by accepting that the Thacther reforms were necessary and here to stay. Fortunately, most of the old Labourites who carry the flag for class war are dying off now - leaving Britain with two real alternatives (or is it three?) for a change.

Nicholas it sounds as if your mother was a foolish windbag and she raised a silly fruitcake. But I must admit that I am an American and have a difficult time relating to your strange British ways.

Mrs Thatcher inculcated an era of greed that fed directly into the present economic payback, and ‘leaving aside the Iraq war’ while praising Blair is somewhat like discussing Osama BL ‘leaving aside 9/11’.

Alex Massie’ s article is about how Blair is ‘mud on the eastern side of the Atlantic’. I was simply pointing our how some Brits, like my late mother, held that view of him even before he took over number 10 and it wasn’t due to their being ‘right wing’ because they distrusted Mrs T as well. The last meaningful Prime Minister of Britain was Macmillan but then I am 'a silly fruitcake raised by a windbag' so what would I know about anything.

You sound like a unique British specimen, the left-wing Tory. Evelyn Waugh on a bicycle. Things in dear Britain used to be so grand, you see. Thatcher managed to revive a dying nation and give it a modern economy, and all we get from you is about how she inculcated some fantasy of a 'culture of greed' that was so much worse than the 'culture of the endless industrial action' that preceded it.

The financial crisis can go on for another 10 years and you Brits will be much, much better off than you would be if you'd had Callaghan (or Heath - whose house I recently visited) for ten years.

I put Iraq aside because it is a larger topic than the issue you were raising about Blair's character. Blair is hated over Iraq in Britain because of both the new "little England" mentality (that affects much of Europe elsewhere as well) but mostly because he had the temerity to support the hated George W. Bush. If Al Gore had been president, he almost certainly would have attacked Iraq as well - and it would be interesting to see what kind of response the international left had for that (I can remember back in 2000 the word in lefty circles was that there was essentially no difference between Gore and Bush, so, let's all just vote for Ralph Nader...)

The idea that Blair was a puppet of Bush's, so widely held in Britian, is wrong on the facts. It was Blair who declared for regime change in Iraq in '99, Blair who moved most of the British Army to Iraq in late 2002, and Blair who made the moral case for war (which I still agree with - the WMDs were a red herring). Where Blair's instincts failed him, and where, contrary to popular belief, he exerted an influence on Bush, was in convincing Bush to go to the UN. The UN was not needed, and in any case, was unlikely to vote for actual war (when have they ever?). Bush valued Blair and Britain, so went along with the advice, which was bad advice. Going to the UN was a mistake because it led to a misperception that UN approval was somehow necessary. Nobody mentions how UN approval was not sought in Kosovo, or in Afghanistan. This misperception is to some extent the fault of Blair's insistance on taking the issue back to the UN, and it is unfortunate.

Hate Blair, if you will, for going to war in Iraq. But don't potray him as Bush's poodle.

The subject here was Blair's unpopularity, mud etc. For many in the UK, Iraq and a host of other dubious undertakings simply confirmed a view they had long held of him; few Americans, on the other hand, had heard of him before he took office. I doubt you have either the time or the inclination but you would find this confirmed in Leo Abse' s book 'Tony Blair: The Man who lost his Smile'. Furthermore, I never wrote that I thought Blair was 'Bush's poodle or puppet' and, indeed, I expressed no personal opinion on the man at all. My mother would have been more than capable of defending her view but she has, alas, been dead these thirteen years and all I can do is tell you that it existed and was shared by many others.

Don’t be so serious about the whole thing. Blair was only elected because people had had quite enough of John Major, a weak, silly man who appeared to make his own trousers.

Thank you for those thoughtful, civilized responses. You make some good points.

Blair and Bush are two modern day patriots and will be recognized by history as such. Liberal loons drool and stutter about because these men made the hard choices for the world. We are now blessed with a Poser in Chief in our White House who is the worst of the worst failures

Your post makes only slightly more sense that most of your ravings - but, I live in China, and I can tell you with 100% certainty that American leadership in unlikely to ever be threatened by the Chinese.

I will also point out that it is Medicare and Social Security, not military spending, that threatens to sink the US federal government. Imperial adventures continue to be a matter of will, not finances. In Britian's case, the backheesh is lacking, even if the spirit were willing.

I think you are correct to the extent that military expenses have a tendency of getting squeezed out of the budget due to rising and impossible-to-reduce social costs (e.g., Greece, France). France, Britain, Germany, etc., simply feel they don't need militaries (and why not - they always have the US to take care of any real problems) and are certainly going to minimize the pain felt by the people who are used to getting subsized healthcare, etc. Although not quite as bad as Europe, it is entitlements that are crushing the US finances, especially in the long run - not that we couldn't save money on the military as well.

We've browbeat the Germans into hating themselves. If there were any hint of any significant German rearmament, the words "Nazi", "Hitler", and "Holocaust" would start pouring out of US media in a nanosecond.

What 'thousands' of innocent people were killed by the UK? Where was this? I seem to have missed this event. Surely you can't be mistaking the British forces for Al Queda in Mesopotamia and for the Sunni terrorists who have killed about 50,000 Iraqis over the past six years?