Britain Cannot Withdraw From WW III

Tony Blair's successor, Gordon Brown, took office Wednesday and subsequently reshuffled the British cabinet. Disturbingly, Brown pointedly signaled an impending cutoff in British support for the Iraq war by appointing David Miliband, an opponent of the war and an advocate of appeasement of Hezbollah and Hamas, as his foreign secretary.

(In Miliband's previous office, Denis Boyles points out, he was too politically correct to cull badgers. If the man can't stand up to the badger lobby, how is he supposed to stand up to Iran?)
The switch turns out to have been bad timing, because the new cabinet was greeted by reminders of the same old war: a new terrorist plot targeting London's night life with not just one but two car bombs discovered and defused—so far.

I believe it was George Orwell who said, "You may not be interested in war—but war is interested in you." Gordon Brown's new government may contemplate withdrawing from the war against radical Islam in Iraq—but it cannot withdraw from the war radical Islam has declared against Britain.

"Britain's Brown Picks a War Critic for New Cabinet," Al Webb, Washington Times, June 29 New Prime Minister Gordon Brown named a Cabinet yesterday that included a critic of the Iraq war as foreign secretary—a clear signal of a shift in British policy toward the unpopular conflict….

[T]he most eye-catching new name was rising political star David Miliband, who at 41 becomes the youngest British foreign secretary in 30 years, and potentially one of the most controversial, given his discomfort over the Blair government's policy on Iraq.

Mr. Miliband voted along with much of Parliament to go to war in Iraq four years ago, but he is reported to have later become quite skeptical about the decision to send in British troops….
Mr. Miliband also expressed dismay over Mr. Blair's refusal to call for an immediate truce during last summer's war between Israel and the Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon.

That decision provoked a party revolt against Mr. Blair and helped drive him to his decision to step down as prime minister.