Appeasement

An interesting, disturbing or just completely stupid analogy from our former prime minister? Beyond the name of the country there's very little new in Blair's rhetoric: despite all the facile Bush's poodle talk, he'd been making the case for intervention in Iraq as long ago as 1999 (post-Kosovo), and had already put his words into action in Sierra Leone. In fact, one outcome of the mess the Allies caused in Iraq was to make humanitarian interventions in places like Darfur or Zimbabwe almost impossible to stage or justify to the voting public. Hopefully, a more positive effect will be to nip the economically-driven Let's invade Iran clamour in the bud, and quickly.