LONDON -- As the grim business of policing a vanquished Iraq drags on, it seems less and less likely that Prime Minister Tony Blair's authority over party and country will survive. For the first time since Labour's landslide victory in 1997 the Conservatives are nudging ahead of Labour in opinion polls despite their lack of policy and identity, despite the near-universal lack of respect for their leader, Iain Duncan Smith.

This precipitate slide in the popularity of Blair must have come as a shock. Did he not, in the months leading up to the war in Iraq, impress people with his vigor, his boldness, his commitment, his willingness to risk unpopularity? Are not these the hallmarks of a great leader? He must have comforted himself with these thoughts as the streets of British cities filled with people demonstrating against his Iraq policy.

But no one should gamble on war. War is the ultimate violence, the great destroyer of safe assumptions and assumptions of safety. Anyone who supports or condones war, however righteous the cause, is implicated in that great violence. Wars produce feelings of guilt and shame, of vengeance and great fear -- feelings that cannot be contained by the ordinary workings of a placid democracy.