Another Tony. (Letters).

To the Editors:

In response to John Gross's interesting account of the current mood in London ("A Tale of Two Tonies" March 2003), I should like to point out that there are British pro-American conservatives who are, nonetheless, opposed to the war on Iraq for sound conservative reasons. We do not think it is in America's interests or in British interests. In my case, I am not convinced that this will be a just war as defined by the Christian faith, nor am I convinced that the good conservative policies of deterrence and containment should be so lightly abandoned. I do not believe that there is anything conservative about war, which was the handmaiden and herald of state control and socialism throughout the twentieth century. And I fear that licensing preemptive war aimed at achieving regime change has serious implications for the conservative concept of national sovereignty. Interestingly, Anthony Blair, who now seems beyond criticism in the United States (to the despair of many British conservatives, who see him as a menace to liberty and as the leader of the most rapaciously redistributive and anti-middle class socialist government here since 1945), is not what many Americans think him to be. He is not exactly a man with a long record of stoutly defending his own country's interests against foreign threats or terrorism. He was an adult supporter of unilateral nuclear disarmament at the height of the Cold War. He opposed Margaret Thatcher's decision to retake the Falkland