Tony Blair has won in the Commons; now his fate is in the hands of the generals

For some reason Britain is always sunny on the outbreak of war. London basked under a heat-wave in August 1914 as Asquith almost casually condemned Britain to four years of slaughter. It was the same in September 1939. This week has seen a succession of cloudless spring days. I suppose there is always the remote hope that something will intervene, but it looks all but certain that bombs will be falling on Baghdad by the time these words are read.

It is a new kind of war, corresponding to the latest manifestation of American imperialism. Old-style US conservatives, like Henry Kissinger, were pessimists. They worked with the world as they found it, merely seeking to mould intractable materials as best they could to US interests. The new generation, like Donald Rumsfeld, take a more radical approach. This involves deciding what kind of world they would like, then creating it afresh.