Europe's Pull Grows on Britain

U.S. SHOULD HEED IMPLICATIONS
The British are invading Normandy again, this time not to save it from tyranny but to buy it for themselves. From Bayeux to Honfleur to Rouen, shop windows advertise everything from thatched-roof cottages to mini-chateaux. And the Brits--flush with cash, cramped for space and with easy access by air and the Chunnel--are snapping up vacation and retirement homes at a furious rate even though the pound (and the dollar) are down against the euro.

The passions of the British--whether in real estate, diplomacy or arms--matter more to America now than at any time since World War II, when GIs stormed the same beaches of Normandy that, increasingly, serve as vacation spots for English-speaking peoples. British Prime Minister Tony Blair is President Bush's only truly powerful global soulmate in the war on terror. He is Bush's best translator and sidekick. Without him, and without Britain, America would be even more isolated diplomatically than it is.

I am an American who covers his country's politics for a living. But I have been coming to the U.K. and Europe for decades, every year for the last several. This time, my family and I traveled from Western Ireland through Dublin and Scotland to England and France. My bottom line is this: Blair may be morally right to stand with America in the post-9/11 world. But he is (sadly in my view) on the wrong side of the drift of British history.