I watched most of Blair's speech to the House of Commons on C-Span. It's more impressive in print. The instances he marshalls of Saddam's bad faith make me wonder about the sanity, honesty or both of those who keep complaining that the case for war hasn't been made.

Many of the countries who were reluctant to back us in the U.N. are coming on board since we made it clear that we weren't going to sit on our thumbs waiting for the Axis of Weasels to give us its blessings. It just shows once again that diplomacy is pointless without power and resolve backing it up.

Blair made a point, which I don't agree with, that not to act endangers the U.N. because it had passed Resolution 1441 and then lacked the will to enforce it. He's right to put the failure of diplomacy at the feet those who used the threat of veto to stop a 17th resolution, but the fact that the U.S. and the Coalition of the Willing will now go ahead anyway, hardly strengthens one's faith in the U.N. as an effective body for establishing world peace.

This scenario has played itself out many times since the creation of the U.N. and it has not given us any reason to keep placing our hope in that body. Think about the USSR's incursions into Hungary and Chechoslovakia, and the Berlin blockade which we beat with an airlift of supplies. The U.N. was impotent because the USSR had a permanent place on the Security Council and a veto.

I don't know why I'm making this point for the 100th time, when you can read the same thing with better documentation on a few hundred blogs. I suppose it's because of the deliberate ignorance from the apologists for doing nothing but permanent inspections. Politicians, especially, should know that once they know you can be rolled, you're finished. It makes you wonder how much faith these people have in the United States--given its history in dealing with its conquered foes--compared with the conventional wisdom of that the U.N. is the way of the future.

If we really want world peace we should be evangelizing democracy, not lecturing helplessly to the likes of Saddam Hussein. I don't know how many times I've heard the aphorism that it's better to be feared than loved, but it never seems to sink in.