America has suffered a huge loss in the war against Islamic terror with British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s plan to step down within a year. Hounded by rivals in his own party and faced with falling public support, Blair had little choice.

But that still doesn’t make it right. And it is a setback for the good guys in World War III because Blair was one of the few pols in Britain who “gets it” about terrorism. Not since they threw Winston Churchill out of office two months after Germany surrendered in 1945 have the people of Great Britain shown such monumental ingratitude. And foolishness.

Never mind that Churchill resisted the tide of appeasement that swept through London before World War II and when France gave up in 1940. While those around him urged negotiations with Herr Hitler, Churchill said no and meant it. He then rallied a dispirited nation through the grim days of the Nazi blitz. Yet even before Japan surrendered, voters kicked Churchill to the sidelines.

Now Blair, in the midst of the epic battle of our times, is to suffer similar banishment. Never mind that he has shown rare political courage in standing up to Muslim fanatics at home and around the world. And paired with his tongue-tied partner in Washington, he is the eloquent spokesman and philosopher for the “special relationship” between England and its former colonies as we together confront Islamic terrorism.

Delivering the message about what we are fighting for is no small matter in the media age. For even at his best, which he has been lately in several speeches about terrorism, Bush is a workmanlike orator. He is direct and forceful, but only rarely eloquent and almost never a pleasure to the ear or the eye. Blair, on the other hand, seems practically poetic on almost every occasion, scripted or not.

Blair took office in 1997, a British version of Bill Clinton. Like Clinton did with Democrats, Blair nudged his leftist Labor Party toward the center, and the two charming boomers became fast buddies. Each also has a liberal, lawyer wife.

When George Bush became president, Blair looked as though he had lost a friend. But the surprise was that Blair and Bush bonded like no trans-Atlantic leaders since Churchill and FDR. It happened in the foxhole of 9/11.

As we mark the fifth anniversary of that awful day, the scope of that partnership is clear. In Iraq and at the United Nations, Great Britain has been our most dependable ally. That London subsequently suffered its own terror attack cemented that bond. Or should have. But just as Iraq has imperiled Bush, British voters are war-weary. Blair, for supporting Bush, has been attacked as America’s “poodle.” Now he has paid with his career.

Churchill has attained mythical status, but it is hard to top Blair’s clear thinking and rhetorical gift. In March of 2004, for example, he warned that Islamic fanaticism “is to the world’s security, what globalization is to the world’s economy.” He said the old policy of containment, used against the Soviet Union, “will not work in the face of the global threat that confronts us. The terrorists have no intention of being contained.”

Then, last August in Los Angeles, he described an “arc of extremism” that unites disparate Muslim groups around the world. “It doesn’t always need structures and command centers or even explicit communication,” Blair said. “It knows what it thinks.”

As I have written, “it knows what it thinks” brilliantly captures the inhuman nature of the enemy. For that insight alone, Tony Blair would deserve our undying gratitude.