A Journey (62 page)

However, the conclusion from this is not that we give up; still less that if we had never bothered, we or the people would be better off. The conclusion is that the war is brutal and long. And that is exactly what makes it all the more important to win.

The paradigm through which we see all this today is that we cannot see the end in sight and meanwhile we are losing brave and committed soldiers in a fight whose outcome is uncertain. But in any serious war, such an issue is at some point reached and the question then is whether to retreat or to press forward. The soldiers are not being killed because the cause is any less just and not necessarily because it is being badly prosecuted; they are being lost because the enemy is fighting us; because for them, too, the stakes are high and because they can see the possibility, if they last out, that we will lose heart or cobble together some ignominious deal in which we will trade the essential principles we are fighting for, in return for calm. Then they will re-emerge stronger, and their ideology with them.

So it is important to recall why the war in Afghanistan happened. It did so because on that fateful day, terrorists harboured by the Taliban and trained in Afghanistan showed that they would kill innocent people on a hitherto unknown scale, to drive us out of alliance with those in Islam who want peaceful coexistence and force us to leave that world to the ideology of religious extremism, to government by fanatic or dictator. We did not seek them out. They sought us. Had it not been September 11, it would have been another occasion.

In the immediate aftermath, too, we were unsure of where the next strike might come. For some time afterward, we had an emergency procedure in place if a plane was over London or any major city and had lost contact with air traffic control. Basically there was a series of escalations of alarm up to the point where I could be asked to authorise bringing the plane down. Fighters were on standby ready to go up in the air and shoot it out of the sky if so ordered. It only happened once. I recall it, as you can imagine, vividly. I was at Chequers at the weekend and was called urgently to the phone. A passenger plane had been out of contact for some time, and was heading over London. I had the senior RAF commander authorised to get my decision. The fighter jet was airborne. For several anxious minutes we talked, trying desperately to get an instinct as to whether this was threat or mishap. The deadline came. I decided we should hold back. Moments later the plane regained contact. It had been a technical error. I needed to sit down and thank God after that one!

As I left the stage of the TUC – ironically given a better reception than any I ever enjoyed – I was already putting in train the emergency meetings that would take the proximate decisions for Britain’s security. I also fixed calls with the key world leaders, including of course President Bush. I took calls from the main ministers and the Cabinet Secretary on the train back to London.

It was a strange journey as we sat in the carriage riding through the peaceful and beautiful Sussex countryside, such a contrast to the fevered concentration of the conversations about a world whose security had just been turned upside down. At that point, though, as I have said, I was relatively calm, clear in my own mind about what had to be done.

Back in Downing Street and during the first of several emergency sessions with ministers and officials, we ran through the measures we had to take. Flights over London were suspended, the police and security services were put on red alert. The intelligence people were dispatched to ferret out any possible plots here. Every part of Whitehall was buzzing and alive with activity. At such moments the machine is at its best, covering all bases, setting an agenda for the decision-making, joining up the disparate parts in some sort of semi-automatic cohesion. It was impressive. I was glad of the steady hand of Richard Wilson and his senior Civil Service colleagues.

I spoke in turn to Putin, Schroeder, Chirac and Berlusconi, and the next day to President Bush. The collective sense of solidarity was absolute. Everyone was fully behind the US. It is hard now to realise just how fearful people were at that time. For all we knew, there were other attacks about to happen. At any moment, we expected to hear of some fresh atrocity.

I saw my role as that of galvanising the maximum level of support. I knew that when the immediate impact of the event diminished, there was always a danger of backsliding; and I also knew the key thing was to assemble as broad a coalition of support for action as possible. On the night of September 11, I set out our position as a country in a broadcast from Downing Street:

This mass terrorism is the new evil in our world. The people who perpetrate it have no regard whatever for the sanctity or value of human life, and we the democracies of the world must come together to defeat it and eradicate it. This is not a battle between the United States of America and terrorism, but between the free and democratic world and terrorism. We, therefore, here in Britain stand shoulder to shoulder with our American friends in this hour of tragedy, and we, like them, will not rest until this evil is driven from our world.

‘Shoulder to shoulder’ came to be something of a defining phrase. I chose the words carefully. I was aware this was a big commitment that would come to be measured not in words but in actions; and I knew the road on which we were going to travel ‘shoulder to shoulder’ was going to be rocky. How rocky, as I say, I did not know, but I think and hope that had I known, my words would have been the same.

I took this view for reasons both of principle and of national interest (and, incidentally, have never believed the two are mutually exclusive). As a matter of principle, I was sure that we should see the atrocity as an attack not on the US per se, but because the US was the leader of the free world, it was therefore an attack on us too. It was also in our national interest to defeat this menace and if we wanted to play a major part in shaping the conduct of any war, we had to be there at the outset with a clear and unequivocal demonstration of support. I believed in the alliance with America, I thought its maintenance and enhancement a core objective of British policy, and I knew that alliances are only truly fashioned at times of challenge, not in times of comfort.

Over the next days, I rallied support. I hosted Silvio Berlusconi who, as ever, was straightforward in his commitment to the US. I visited France and Germany and they too were on board, though I noticed with a little anxiety that Jacques Chirac particularly was urging caution in respect of any response. Parliament was recalled and I made a statement. Opinion was universally – among Opposition leaders at least – supportive.

On 20 September, I travelled to the US. By then, my position as the world leader strongly articulating the need for comprehensive and strategic action was pretty well established. My concern throughout was to make sure America felt embraced and supported, felt a real arm of solidarity stretched out towards them. The fear, but above all the sense of anger and outrage, would be enormous. How it was channelled would be a product not just of how America’s leaders spoke to their own people, but of how the outside world expressed its sympathy and also its readiness to share responsibility.

Of course, the other crucial point was that many Britons had lost their lives. I met families of those who had died. Such encounters are always the hardest thing you do. You have to retain the dignity of office but you genuinely feel the grief, and can often not help expressing it in tears. One woman I met was pregnant. Her husband had flown over for a meeting in the World Trade Center. He and his child would never see one another. Other parents mourned the loss of their only son, whom they plainly idolised. I was shocked by the hideous random nature of terrorism. Dead just because you happened to be there. No other reason. No other explanation. Just the merest happenstance.

Having landed in New York, we went to St Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue. The mayor Rudy Giuliani was there. I liked him instantly. He was under immense pressure but he seemed to be not only coping, but stepping forward and giving a strong sense of leadership. I had a message from the Queen that was to be read out, and then gave a short reading myself. The Queen’s message was strong and clear. The words I quoted were from Thornton Wilder’s novel
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
about five people who die when a bridge collapses over a gorge:

But soon we die, and all memory of those five will have left Earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough. All those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

As we stepped outside the church, a battery of cameras and journalists assailed us and I spoke some words which I had thought about on the ride from the airport:

I can only imagine what it must have been like for the people of New York for the past nine days . . . My father’s generation went through the Blitz. They know what it is like to suffer this deep tragedy and attack. There was one country and one people which stood by us at that time. That country was America and those people were the American people. As you stood by us in those days, we stand side by side with you now. Your loss is our loss. Your struggle is our struggle.

I felt Rudy next to me relax and take comfort as I spoke. I could see on the faces of people we walked past an intense, earnest desire to know if they had friends at this moment of trial; if America was alone or with others; if the world meant the words spoken and would follow through with deeds. I wanted to assure them that this was so, that at least Britain would not be wanting, that what we said we meant, that we would be at the front and not the back.

We finally got to Washington, an hour late for the meeting with President Bush, who was to address both Houses of Congress that night. As I drove up to the back entrance of the White House, the one I used on so many occasions, where the immaculately dressed marines stood to attention either side of the door, I wondered how I would find George. We had spoken on the phone a few times. We had already started to exchange ideas. After the initial shock, he had handled himself exceptionally well, and plainly had the American people right behind him.

I went into the Oval Office. He was there putting the finishing touches to the speech. It had been agreed I would sit in the gallery to hear it, side by side with George’s wife Laura. He was unbelievably, almost preternaturally calm. We even had dinner together. I reflected that faced with a similar speech, I would have been closeted away, drafting and redrafting. I would have been dismayed at having to entertain someone. I offered to slip away but emphatically he said no, stay, let’s talk, and we did until it was time for him to go over. I suddenly realised two things about him (and at that time I did not know him nearly as well as I came to): the first was that he sincerely welcomed the friendship I and Britain had showed. He didn’t just appreciate it; he found it a source of strength. Second, he was not panicking or fretting or even plain worrying. He was at peace with himself. He had his mission as president. He hadn’t asked for it. He hadn’t expected it. He hadn’t found it. It had found him. But he was clear. The world had changed, and as president of the world’s most powerful country, he was tasked with making sense of that change and dealing with it.

As we got into the lift, he as ever exchanging a bit of banter with the lovely George Hannie, the maître d’ of the White House flat, I asked him if he was nervous. ‘No, not really,’ he replied. ‘I have a speech here and the message is clear.’ I marvelled at it, looked carefully at him; but yes, he did indeed appear completely at ease.

It was the first time I had seen a speech to Congress. (In 2003 I would deliver one myself.) It was an extraordinary affair, something that only the US could do with that elan and confidence. As the president spoke, you could feel the representatives come together around love of the nation, the pride, patriotism and self-belief exuding from every pore of that wonderful arena of mahogany, brass and stone, rich in history, certain of the future. George singled me out in the gallery alongside Laura and I duly took a bow, somewhat self-consciously.

As I looked down on the assembled ranks, so forthright, so determined, so sure, I reflected on what lay ahead. I assumed we could dislodge the Taliban. I had already worked out that it should be done by a tactical manoeuvre of offering them a choice: yield up bin Laden and the terrorists, or be removed from power. And then what? I knew little about Afghanistan, but I did know it was a country that over the centuries had been invaded, occupied and plundered yet always seemed eventually to swallow and spit out the invaders.

Some months before, sitting in the Long Gallery in Chequers surrounded by the portraits of the previous tenants and Cromwell memorabilia, including his swords at the Battle of Naseby, I had stumbled upon a three-volume set of diaries. They were by Field Marshal Roberts, an officer and then head of the British Army in the mid- to late nineteenth century, including the time of the Indian Mutiny. They were fascinating reading, and gave a brilliant first-hand account of what it was like to be a young officer, recounting the events of the mutiny, how it spread and how it was put down, conveying a vivid sense of that part of the British Empire. They described battles in Hyderabad and Peshawar and then in the Hindu Kush, in Kandahar, Helmand and Lashkar Gah, names all too familiar today.

They also showed the remarkable spirit of the British soldier. As the mutiny took hold – and it all arose out of the false rumour that native Muslim soldiers in the British Army had had their rifles greased with pork – the British troops were pushed back and towns were overrun. The native soldiers, well trained and well equipped by the very people they now set out to kill, fought fiercely. For a time, things hung in the balance. Nawabs, the princes of India, calculated which way it would go, some joining the mutiny, others giving provender to the rulers.