Tony Blair: A Good Man Brought Down by One Mistake

Tony Blair, under pressure from his own party, will step down as British PM in July, 2007. Over the last ten years he has been a tremendous asset to the UK at home and abroad, except in one case.

He has to leave office for making one very big mistake. Going abroad with George W. Bush. It was due to a sincere desire by Blair to retain the "special relationship" that he thought existed between the U.S. and the UK ever since Roosevelt and Churchill defeated Hitler in WW II.

The first problem was that most Americans, and George Bush especially, don't view anything special about the relationship.

Blair also thought, naively, that he could serve as a moderating influence on our little boy president who always wanted to be a cowboy. He did not know Bush well enough when he fatefully agreed to take the UK into Iraq with the U.S.

He didn't know that the Bush is not only stubborn and inflexible but also dumb and unsophisticated. The "Yo, Blair" humiliation was the final straw for British public opinion.

It is sad to see a real statesman leave the scene, while a clown continues his rope dance through the Middle East quagmire.