Tony Blair has been defending the global ‘war on terror’ this week, arguing that we need to stamp on terrorism wherever it exists.

Well, about some of this he is right. He is right that there are some people out there who are out to destroy our way of life. (Their religion isn’t the cause of that, it’s simply the banner under which they fight, much as it was for those fighting the crusades a millennium ago). And he is right that there are some people in this country and elsewhere in the west, who think we can respond effectively to that simply with inaction or woolly understanding.

If we want to preserve the principles we value - liberty, democracy, equality, for example - then we absolutely need to be prepared to be robust in taking action to defend them.

But where he is wrong is to think that the policies that he and the current President of the United States of America have followed, are doing that effectively.

Firstly, the invasion of Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with clamping down on terrorism. If the west wanted to do something to tackle global terrorism, and make another 9/11 less likely, there is a long list of effective actions it could have taken, none of which would have had anything much to do with Iraq. He and Dubya made a decision to start a war in Iraq for a wholly different set of reasons - as far as I can tell a combination of a petty grudge from the previous Gulf War, and the desire to demonstrate that America was a force which had to be obeyed in all things. (Even if there really had been nuclear weapons there, why didn’t they start with the much more obvious problem in that respect of North Korea?).

And secondly, it now seems pretty clear to everyone that the war in Iraq has promoted the growth of terrorism and extremism, not diminished it. A bit of an odd strategy for tackling it.

There are a number of things that western governments could do now to discourage the growth of terrorism in the middle east and elsewhere. Broadly speaking they mean working with the governments and people there, rather than generating rhetoric against them. I’m afraid it does certainly now mean the west withdrawing from Iraq as soon as is possible - the withdrawal will be difficult for Iraq but quite simply the longer we stay the worse we make it.

I certainly don’t rule out using force in certain circumstances and at certain times, as the right tool for tackling terrorism, but mainly the most effective thing we can do now to achieve that, is remove the perception of the west as anti-Islamic.

Curiously enough I think the only small shred of justification that Tony could have claimed is the one that he himself emphatically rejects. His claims to have been a calming influence no Dubya have been ridiculed and I imagine that in general that’s probably right.

But what he (along with John Howard in Australia, and one or two others) has done through his policy is to reduce somewhat the very stark polarisation between the US - or more accurately this current US administration - and the whole rest of the world which would otherwise have existed. And a world which had the USA in one corner and the whole rest of the world in the other would have been very dangerous indeed.

By adopting the position he did, Blair has helped to mitigate that, to the serious benefit of all of us - even if, as he says, he was always the one keen to do it for its own sake, not just to avoid a breach with Washington.

The approach of the anti-American hawks in Europe and elsewhere who see such a position as simply appeasement, and pandering to Bush, would have led us down a path towards conflict. That to do so would have been quite unnecessary is shown amply by the sharp decline now in popularity within America of Bush’s approach - and the rise of the anti-war view there. The rest of the world - including the role of Blair - has together managed America quite well over this whole tragic episode: conflict with the USA has been avoided, while it has in the end come round.

The growing popularity of the anti-war movement in America was confirmed last night by the debate among Democrat challengers, in which they all confirmed their opposition to Bush’s approach on Iraq and the world, including several who originally supported it. Let us hope that the next occupant of the White House, Democrat or Republican, will be similarly enlightened.