He thinks that he's the wind of change

An interesting thing illustrated by Tony Blair's South Africa speech is that he sees an arc linking his younger liberal international activist self with the US/UK intervention in Iraq. Of course he doesn't make it quite that explicit, but what else could he mean in this section of the speech dealing with the lessons of the anti-apartheid struggle? --

In the 1980s my party, the Labour Party, struggled purposefully in Britain to put the case for sanctions. But I remember also how far we were from much conventional wisdom which told us: we didn't understand, South Africa would collapse if apartheid ended, we were meddling. We know now these arguments are misplaced, even ludicrous. But not then.

There is a lesson here. Progress does not come from the cautious. It isn't born of the status quo. It tends to challenge conventional wisdom. It rarely is the product of refraining; nearly always a consequence of sustained action against the odds. It accepts the pain of transition. It never yields to the notion of "the way things are".

No wonder he's able to sound as passionate and yet as detached from mistakes as George Bush.