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07/24/2003
America's Friend: Tony Blair
[We will return August 7]
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in his speech to the U.S.
Congress, July 17, one that many have said was one of the best
ever given in that chamber.
[I took out introductory remarks of his.]
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Members of Congress, I feel a most urgent sense of mission
about today’s world.
September the 11th was not an isolated event, but a tragic
prologue, Iraq another act, and many further struggles will be set
upon this stage before it’s over.
There never has been a time when the power of America was so
necessary or so misunderstood, or when, except in the most
general sense, a study of history provides so little instruction for
our present day.
We were all reared on battles between great warriors, between
great nations, between powerful forces and ideologies that
dominated entire continents. And these were struggles for
conquest, for land, or money, and the wars were fought by
massed armies. And the leaders were openly acknowledged, the
outcomes decisive.
Today, none of us expect our soldiers to fight a war on our own
territory. The immediate threat is not conflict between the
world’s most powerful nations. And why? Because we all have
too much to lose. Because technology, communication, trade
and travel are bringing us ever closer together. Because in the
last 50 years, countries like yours and mine have tripled their
growth and standard of living. Because even those powers like
Russia or China or India can see the horizon, the future wealth,
clearly and know they are on a steady road toward it. And
because all nations that are free value that freedom, will defend it
absolutely, but have no wish to trample on the freedom of others.
We are bound together as never before. And this coming
together provides us with unprecedented opportunity but also
makes us uniquely vulnerable.
And the threat comes because in another part of our globe there
is shadow and darkness, where not all the world is free, where
many millions suffer under brutal dictatorship, where a third of
our planet lives in a poverty beyond anything even the poorest in
our societies can imagine, and where a fanatical strain of
religious extremism has arisen, that is a mutation of the true and
peaceful faith of Islam.
And because in the combination of these afflictions a new and
deadly virus has emerged. The virus is terrorism whose intent to
inflict destruction is unconstrained by human feeling and whose
capacity to inflict it is enlarged by technology.
This is a battle that can’t be fought or won only by armies. We
are so much more powerful in all conventional ways than the
terrorists, yet even in all our might, we are taught humility.
In the end, it is not our power alone that will defeat this evil. Our
ultimate weapon is not our guns, but our beliefs.
There is a myth that though we love freedom, others don’t; that
our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture; that
freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law are American
values, or Western values; that Afghan women were content
under the last of the Taliban; that Saddam was somehow beloved
by his people; that Milosevic was Serbia’s savior.
Members of Congress, ours are not Western values, they are the
universal values of the human spirit. And anywhere, any time
ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the
same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule
of law, not the rule of the secret police.
The spread of freedom is the best security for the free. It is our
last line of defense and our first line of attack. And just as the
terrorist seeks to divide humanity in hate, so we have to unify it
around an idea. And that idea is liberty.
We must find the strength to fight for this idea and the
compassion to make it universal.
Abraham Lincoln said, ‘Those that deny freedom to others
deserve it not for themselves.’
And it is this sense of justice that makes moral the love of
liberty.
In some cases where our security is under direct threat, we will
have recourse to arms. In others, it will be by force of reason.
But in all cases, to the same end: that the liberty we seek is not
for some but for all, for that is the only true path to victory in this
struggle.
But first we must explain the danger.
Our new world rests on order. The danger is disorder. And in
today’s world, it can now spread like contagion.
The terrorists and the states that support them don’t have large
armies or precision weapons; they don’t need them. Their
weapon is chaos.
The purpose of terrorism is not the single act of wanton
destruction. It is the reaction it seeks to provoke: economic
collapse, the backlash, the hatred, the division, the elimination of
tolerance, until societies cease to reconcile their differences and
become defined by them. Kashmir, the Middle East, Chechnya,
Indonesia, Africa – barely a continent or nation is unscathed.
The risk is that terrorism and states developing weapons of mass
destruction come together. And when people say, ‘That risk is
fanciful,’ I say we know the Taliban supported al Qaeda. We
know Iraq under Saddam gave haven to and supported terrorists.
We know there are states in the Middle East now actively
funding and helping people, who regard it as God’s will in the
act of suicide to take as many innocent lives with them on their
way to God’s judgment.
Some of these states are desperately trying to acquire nuclear
weapons. We know that companies and individuals with
expertise sell it to the highest bidder, and we know that at least
one state, North Korea, lets its people starve while spending
billions of dollars on developing nuclear weapons and exporting
the technology abroad.
This isn’t fantasy, it is 21st-century reality, and it confronts us
now.
Can we be sure that terrorism and weapons of mass destruction
will join together? Let us say one thing: If we are wrong, we will
have destroyed a threat that at its least is responsible for inhuman
carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history
will forgive.
But if our critics are wrong, if we are right, as I believe with
every fiber of instinct and conviction I have that we are, and we
do not act, then we will have hesitated in the face of this
menace when we should have given leadership. That is
something history will not forgive.
But precisely because the threat is new, it isn’t obvious. It turns
upside-down our concepts of how we should act and when, and it
crosses the frontiers of many nations. So just as it redefines our
notions of security, so it must refine our notions of diplomacy.
There is no more dangerous theory in international politics than
that we need to balance the power of America with other
competitive powers; different poles around which nations gather.
Such a theory may have made sense in 19th-century Europe. It
was perforce the position in the Cold War. Today, it is an
anachronism to be discarded like traditional theories of security.
And it is dangerous because it is not rivalry but partnership we
need; a common will and a shared purpose in the face of a
common threat.
And I believe any alliance must start with America and Europe.
If Europe and America are together, the others will work with us.
If we split, the rest will play around, play us off and nothing but
mischief will be the result of it.
You may think after recent disagreements it can’t be done, but
the debate in Europe is open. Iraq showed that when, never
forget, many European nations supported our action.
And it shows it still when those that didn’t agreed Resolution
1483 in the United Nations for Iraq’s reconstruction.
Today, German soldiers lead in Afghanistan, French soldiers
lead in the Congo where they stand between peace and a return
to genocide.
So we should not minimize the differences, but we should not let
them confound us either.
You know, people ask me after the past months when, let’s say,
things were a trifle strained in Europe, ‘Why do you persist in
wanting Britain at the center of Europe?’ And I say, ‘Well,
maybe if the U.K. were a group of islands 20 miles off
Manhattan, I might feel differently. But actually, we’re 20 miles
off Calais and joined by a tunnel.’
We are a part of Europe, and we want to be. But we also want to
be part of changing Europe. Europe has one potential for
weakness. For reasons that are obvious, we spent roughly a
thousand years killing each other in large numbers.
The political culture of Europe is inevitably rightly based on
compromise. Compromise is a fine thing except when based on
an illusion. And I don’t believe you can compromise with this
new form of terrorism.
But Europe has a strength. It is a formidable political
achievement. Think of the past and think of the unity today.
Think of it preparing to reach out even to Turkey – a nation of
vastly different culture, tradition, religion – and welcome it in.
But my real point is this: Now Europe is at the point of
transformation. Next year, 10 new countries will join.
Romania and Bulgaria will follow. Why will these new
European members transform Europe? Because their scars are
recent, their memories strong, their relationship with freedom
still one of passion, not comfortable familiarity.
They believe in the trans-Atlantic alliance. They support
economic reform. They want a Europe of nations, not a super
state. They are our allies and they are yours. So don’t give up
on Europe. Work with it.
To be a serious partner, Europe must take on and defeat the anti-
Americanism that sometimes passes for its political discourse.
And what America must do is show that this is a partnership built
on persuasion, not command.
Then the other great nations of our world and the small will
gather around in one place, not many. And our understanding of
this threat will become theirs. And the United Nations can then
become what it should be: an instrument of action as well as
debate.
The Security Council should be reformed. We need a new
international regime on the nonproliferation of weapons of mass
destruction.
And we need to say clearly to United Nations members: ‘If you
engage in the systematic and gross abuse of human rights in
defiance of the U.N. charter, you cannot expect to enjoy the same
privileges as those that conform to it.’
I agree. It is not the coalition that determines the mission, but the
mission the coalition. But let us start preferring a coalition and
acting alone if we have to, not the other way around.
True, winning wars is not easier that way, but winning the peace
is.
And we have to win both. And you have an extraordinary record
of doing so. Who helped Japan renew, or Germany reconstruct,
or Europe get back on its feet after World War Two? America.
So when we invade Afghanistan or Iraq, our responsibility does
not end with military victory.
Finishing the fighting is not finishing the job.
So if Afghanistan needs more troops from the international
community to police outside Kabul, our duty is to get them.
Let us help them eradicate their dependency on the poppy, the
crop whose wicked residue turns up on the streets of Britain as
heroin to destroy young British lives, as much as their harvest
warps the lives of Afghans.
We promised Iraq democratic government. We will deliver it.
We promised them the chance to use their oil wealth to build
prosperity for all their citizens, not a corrupt elite, and we will do
so. We will stay with these people so in need of our help until
the job is done.
And then reflect on this: How hollow would the charges of
American imperialism be when these failed countries are and are
seen to be transformed from states of terror to nations of
prosperity, from governments of dictatorship to examples of
democracy, from sources of instability to beacons of calm.
And how risible would be the claims that these were wars on
Muslims if the world could see these Muslim nations still
Muslim, but with some hope for the future, not shackled by
brutal regimes whose principal victims were the very Muslims
they pretended to protect?
It would be the most richly observed advertisement for the values
of freedom we can imagine. When we removed the Taliban and
Saddam Hussein, this was not imperialism. For these oppressed
people, it was their liberation.
And why can the terrorists even mount an argument in the
Muslim world that it isn’t?
Because there is one cause terrorism rides upon, a cause they
have no belief in but can manipulate. I want to be very plain:
This terrorism will not be defeated without peace in the Middle
East between Israel and Palestine.
Here it is that the poison is incubated. Here it is that the
extremist is able to confuse in the mind of a frighteningly large
number of people the case for a Palestinian state and the
destruction of Israel, and to translate this moreover into a battle
between the East and West, Muslim, Jew and Christian.
May this never compromise the security of the state of Israel.
The state of Israel should be recognized by the entire Arab
world, and the vile propaganda used to indoctrinate children, not
just against Israel but against Jews, must cease.
You cannot teach people hate and then ask them to practice
peace. But neither can you teach people peace except by
according them dignity and granting them hope.
Innocent Israelis suffer. So do innocent Palestinians.
The ending of Saddam’s regime in Iraq must be the starting point
of a new dispensation for the Middle East: Iraq, free and stable;
Iran and Syria, who give succor to the rejectionist men of
violence, made to realize that the world will no longer
countenance it, that the hand of friendship can only be offered
them if they resile (sic) completely from this malice, but that if
they do, that hand will be there for them and their people; the
whole region helped toward democracy. And to symbolize it all,
the creation of an independent, viable and democratic Palestinian
state side by side with the state of Israel.
What the president is doing in the Middle East is tough but right.
And let me at this point thank the president for his support, and
that of President Clinton before him, and the support of members
of this Congress, for our attempts to bring peace to Northern
Ireland.
You know, one thing I’ve learned about peace processes:
They’re always frustrating, they’re often agonizing, and
occasionally they seem hopeless. But for all that, having a peace
process is better than not having one.
And why has a resolution of Palestine such a powerful appeal
across the world? Because it embodies an even-handed approach
to justice, just as when this president recommended and this
Congress supported a $15 billion increase in spending on the
world’s poorest nations to combat HIV/AIDS. It was a statement
of concern that echoed rightly around the world.
There can be no freedom for Africa without justice and no justice
without declaring war on Africa’s poverty, disease and famine
with as much vehemence as we removed the tyrant and the
terrorists.
In Mexico in September, the world should unite and give us a
trade round that opens up our markets. I’m for free trade, and I’ll
tell you why: because we can’t say to the poorest people in the
world, “We want you to be free, but just don’t try to sell your
goods in our market.”
And because ever since the world started to open up, it has
prospered. And that prosperity has to be environmentally
sustainable, too.
You know, I remember at one of our earliest international
meetings, a European prime minister telling President Bush that
the solution was quite simple: Just double the tax on American
gasoline.
Your president gave him a most eloquent look.
It reminded me of the first leader of my party, Keir Hardie, in the
early part of the 20th century.
He was a man who used to correspond with the Pankhursts, the
great campaigners for women’s votes. And shortly before the
election, June 1913, one of the Pankhurst sisters wrote to Hardie
saying she had been studying Britain carefully and there was a
worrying rise in sexual immorality linked to heavy drinking. So
she suggested he fight the election on the platform of votes for
women, chastity for men and prohibition for all.
He replied saying, ‘Thank you for your advice. The electoral
benefits of which are not immediately discernible.’
We all get that kind of advice, don’t we?
But frankly, we need to go beyond even Kyoto, and science and
technology is the way. Climate change, deforestation, the
voracious drain on natural resources cannot be ignored.
Unchecked, these forces will hinder the economic development
of the most vulnerable nations first and ultimately all nations.
So we must show the world that we are willing to step up to
these challenges around the world and in our own backyards.
Members of Congress, if this seems a long way from the threat of
terror and weapons of mass destruction, it is only to say again
that the world security cannot be protected without the world’s
heart being one. So America must listen as well as lead. But,
members of Congress, don’t ever apologize for your values.
Tell the world why you’re proud of America. Tell them when
the Star-Spangled Banner starts, Americans get to their feet,
Hispanics, Irish, Italians, Central Europeans, East Europeans,
Jews, Muslims, white, Asian, black, those who go back to the
early settlers and those whose English is the same as some New
York cab drivers I’ve dealt with, but whose sons and daughters
could run for this Congress.
Tell them why Americans, one and all, stand upright and
respectful. Not because some state official told them to, but
because whatever race, color, class or creed they are, being
American means being free. That’s why they’re proud.
As Britain knows, all predominant power seems for a time
invincible, but, in fact, it is transient.
The question is: What do you leave behind?
And what you can bequeath to this anxious world is the light of
liberty.
That is what this struggle against terrorist groups or states is
about. We’re not fighting for domination. We’re not fighting for
an American world, though we want a world in which America is
at ease. We’re not fighting for Christianity, but against religious
fanaticism of all kinds.
And this is not a war of civilizations, because each civilization
has a unique capacity to enrich the stock of human heritage.
We are fighting for the inalienable right of humankind – black or
white, Christian or not, left, right or a million different – to be
free, free to raise a family in love and hope, free to earn a living
and be rewarded by your efforts, free not to bend your knee to
any man in fear, free to be you so long as being you does not
impair the freedom of others.
That’s what we’re fighting for. And it’s a battle worth fighting.
And I know it’s hard on America, and in some small corner of
this vast country, out in Nevada or Idaho or these places I’ve
never been to, but always wanted to go. I know out there there’s
a guy getting on with his life, perfectly happily, minding his own
business, saying to you, the political leaders of this country,
‘Why me? And why us? And why America?’
And the only answer is, ‘Because destiny put you in this place in
history, in this moment in time, and the task is yours to do.’
And our job, my nation that watched you grow, that you fought
alongside and now fights alongside you, that takes enormous
pride in our alliance and great affection in our common bond, our
job is to be there with you.
You are not going to be alone. We will be with you in this fight
for liberty.
We will be with you in this fight for liberty. And if our spirit is
right and our courage firm, the world will be with us.
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Hott Spotts will return August 7.
Brian Trumbore
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