For Blair, Iraq Was No Anomaly

As Tony Blair prepares his exit from No. 10, the British left is already eulogizing the PM as a good man consigned by circumstance to a bad war. Not so, says David Brooks: The crux of Blair's political philosophy was a radical, religious communitarianism, which sired both his leftist leanings domestically, and a genuinely felt interventionism in Iraq.

Blair's thinking was deeply informed by theologian John Macmurray, who thought globalization necessitated, in Blair's words, "a common value system to make it work." Blair consequently stumped for intervention in Kosovo and Iraq, hoping to coalesce clashing civilizations. Brooks holds out hope for Blair's idealism, "despite the disaster in Iraq he co-authored." (More Tony Blair stories.)