The End of the Party

by Andrew Rawnsley

  It was already bothering him that the American President did not seem much interested in that. Bush and his advisers regarded the Middle East peace process as a marginal concern in their current crisis. He was also cool towards Blair’s idea that an emergency summit of the G8 should be called so that they could present a united face against terrorism. Bush was already talking about this being a long conflict. 9/11 seized the American with the sense of purpose that his presidency had hitherto lacked. Now, as he said to Blair and many others, he felt he had a ‘mission for a presidency’.113 It was a mission to which Blair was already binding himself tight. In doing so, he entirely changed the trajectory of both his premiership and New Labour.

  The next day, Blair received a briefing at Number 10 from his military commanders. Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the Chief of the Defence Staff, came with the latest intelligence about American intentions which he had managed to glean from conversations with General Dick Myers, his counterpart in the United States. Boyce reported that the Americans had started ‘gearing up for a response almost instantly’. Their first target was still not decided on. ‘Our worry was that their initial reaction would be to whack Iraq.’ That was a prospect that did not at all appeal to the British military, nor, at this stage, to Blair himself.114

  Massive grey concrete slabs were hurriedly erected around Parliament like a bodyguard of tombstones and cohorts of armed police were mobilised to protect the building when MPs were recalled for an emergency session on Friday, 14 September. The vast majority of MPs murmured in agreement with Blair when he condemned the atrocities and, echoing Bush, warned that there would be no toleration of countries that harboured terrorists. ‘We have been warned,’ he said. ‘Terrorism has taken on a new and frightening aspect. The people perpetrating it wear the ultimate badge of the fanatic: they are prepared to commit suicide in pursuit of their beliefs.’ It also featured another consistent theme of the years ahead, and reflected a worry about community relations in Britain, when he said: ‘So-called Islamic fundamentalists … do not speak or act for the vast majority of decent law-abiding Muslims throughout the world.’ In answer to those already expressing alarm about what the Americans might do, he made a point of praising the United States for its restrained response to these ‘hideous and foul’ attacks.

  ‘They did not lash out. They did not strike first and think afterwards,’ he said, not voicing his own fear that this was precisely what the United States might have done – and might yet do.115

  Bush was still struggling to give America the leadership that a terrified and scarred nation yearned for. ‘Where are you Mr President? New York has a right to know,’ bellowed one of the city’s tabloids about his failure to appear in Manhattan after forty-eight hours had passed since the atrocities.116

  Blair’s apprehensions were exacerbated when the two men had another phone conversation that day. Though Bush thanked him for the memo, and claimed that it ‘mirrored’ his own thinking, Blair put down the phone worried that he was not yet wielding the influence he hoped for.

  His officials found him troubled afterwards. ‘Tony wanted to get to Bush straight away,’ says Jonathan Powell.117 Alastair Campbell observes that he was frustrated by ‘having stilted phone calls, not knowing who was listening in’118. His most senior civil servant agrees: ‘He was very angsty. He wanted to get there.’119

  Blair said to them: ‘I need to see him in a room and look in his eyes.’

  3. Shoulder to Shoulder

  As the Boeing 747 crossed the Atlantic, Tony Blair was sitting in his favoured seat, right up at the front in A1 in first class. A copy of the Koran lay on the table in front of him. He had been interested in the Muslim holy book before 9/11, taking it with him on his August holiday in the Lake District and the south of France that year. When he revealed his summer reading to Alastair Campbell and Philip Gould, his intimates thought this an illustration of his eccentricities, remarking to each other: ‘How very Tony that is … only Tony would read the Koran on holiday.’ Now it seemed ‘eerily prescient’.1 In the days since 9/11, those around him kept hearing Blair quote passages from the Koran, especially those about martyrdom guaranteeing a place in heaven. That was the belief they were up against, he warned.

  They got to Manhattan in the early afternoon of Thursday, 20 September. There was a service at St Thomas’s, the vast, high-vaulted, neo-Gothic Episcopalian church on Fifth Avenue, not far from the still smoking ruins of the annihilated towers. The church was absolutely packed for the service for the known victims of the attacks and those that were delicately called ‘missing’. Tony Blair sat in the front row with Cherie, Kofi Annan, Bill Clinton and his daughter, Chelsea. Sir Christopher Meyer read a message from the Queen, its most beautiful line being the final one: ‘Grief is the price we pay for love.’ The poignant phrase was later chiselled into the stonework of the church.

  Blair read from Thornton Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey. He also brought some words of his own. ‘After the terrible events of last week, there is still shock and disbelief. There is anger, there is fear, but there is also, throughout the world, a profound sense of solidarity, there is courage, there is a surging of the human spirit.’2

  After the service, he offered some further words of solidarity, comparing the atrocities to Hitler’s Blitz on London: ‘As you stood by us in those days, we stand side by side with you now,’ he told America.3 This was not entirely accurate history: the United States joined the Second World War after the Blitz. The sentiment was appreciated all the same. Every leader in the world of any significance was saying similar things in the days after the attacks. The French proclaimed that ‘we are all American.’4 Vladimir Putin of Russia, believing that signing up to a ‘war against terror’ would legitimise his brutal campaign against the rebels in Chechnya, was declaring his solidarity. Even the leaders of Iran expressed sympathy and horror. More importantly, they made secret offers of practical assistance in dealing with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.5

  There was nevertheless a unique quality to Blair’s response to 9/11. This was in part simply because his public performances were so masterly. The Washington Post opined that he and Rudolph Giuliani, the Mayor of New York, were the two political figures ‘who broke through the world’s stunned disbelief’.6

  There were other distinctions that proved critical in sending him down the road to war in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. From the start, he treated this as much more than a terrible attack on a close ally. He viewed it as a defining event in world history which delineated a new threat. ‘The world now knows the full evil and capability of international terrorism which menaces the whole of the democratic world. To commit acts of this nature requires a fanaticism and wickedness that is beyond our normal contemplation,’ he said in one of the welter of speeches and statements he made in the days after the attacks.7 He emphasised it as a direct attack on Britain because of the high number of British casualties. At a news conference he gave just before he flew to New York, he called it ‘the worst terrorist atrocity since the war perpetrated against British citizens’.8 He went further than any other leader in making Bush’s ‘war on terror’ his war, telling MPs: ‘Murder of British people in New York is no different in nature from their murder in the heart of Britain itself. We have not just an interest but an obligation to bring those responsible to account.’9 He amplified these themes talking to journalists on the plane across the Atlantic. He also added a new argument about weapons of mass destruction which was going to be very important for the future.

  What has been brought home to people is that this form of terrorism knows no boundaries … it knows no limits except those limits that are imposed on them by lack of technical capability. If these people could, then they almost certainly would get access to chemical, biological or nuclear capability. We have no option but to act.10

  When Tony Blair crossed the Atlantic to see George Bush for the first time since the atrocities, he did not go simply as a sympathetic friend seeking to
help an ally in its moment of high distress. He went as a man willing and eager to be a fully fledged partner in what he conceived to be a global struggle with a diabolical new menace.

  The unconditionality of this support for America began to stir some dissent in Britain. On the Sunday before his visit, Clare Short, the International Development Secretary, came on to my Radio 4 programme, The Westminster Hour, to deliver the opinion that ‘strident action’ risked ‘inflaming’ the situation and that high civilian casualties in Afghanistan would be ‘unbearable’.11 Blair was furious with her for giving an interview which provoked the first rash of headlines about splits in his government over the response to 9/11. He wrote her an angry note, saying he was also cross because it sent the wrong signal to the Taliban about the seriousness of their intent. If the regime in Kabul thought the Western response was divided, they would be less likely to respond to the ultimatum to yield up bin Laden.12

  Very early on, by talking about standing ‘shoulder to shoulder’, Blair wrote Bush an emotional blank cheque. He was signing up to a global campaign of unspecified duration. His ambassador in Washington came to believe: ‘Tony Blair put himself in his own box. Immediately after 9/11, he gave this tremendous, unconditional support for America and having set that as his standard, he never felt he could subsequently fall below it.’13

  By the time they got to New York airport for the flight to Washington, Blair’s party was running two hours late. The traffic was terrible, the usual gridlock in Manhattan made even more hellish since the atrocities and now compounded by slashing rain. Heightened security at the airport led to further delay, adding to the agitation of the Prime Minister that he was going to get to the White House too late to have a proper conversation with George Bush before the President addressed Congress that night. ‘Tony was in a complete strop, flapping around the plane,’ recalls his Chief of Staff, Jonathan Powell. ‘Bush was about to make the speech of his life and we were two hours late.’14 To cap it all, as the plane stood on the tarmac waiting for clearance to fly to Washington, the British ambassador started to have a screaming fit in the first class cabin because Powell had just told Sir Christopher Meyer that he had been bumped out of a seat at the dinner with Bush to make room for Alastair Campbell. Meyer threatened to resign there and then, bawling at Powell: ‘If you do that, you’ll fucking well cut me off at my fucking knees for the rest of my fucking time in Washington! Is that what you fucking want?’15 That spat was eventually resolved by the quiet diplomacy of David Manning, who asked Condi Rice to arrange an extra place at the table.16

  The public face of Blair’s visit to New York and Washington was to express Britain’s solidarity with America. The private business was focused on trying to ensure the American response to 9/11 would not sacrifice international goodwill by being wildly disproportionate. During the first Gulf War, Margaret Thatcher told George Bush senior: ‘This is not a time to wobble, George.’ On the flight over, Jonathan Powell joked that Blair was going to see the younger Bush with the message: ‘This is a time to wobble.’17 By that he meant Blair hoped to be a calming influence. The mood in America was fearful and vengeful as its leaders warned the country to brace itself for further attacks. Even the liberal New Yorker published a cartoon which had one citizen of Manhattan saying to another: ‘I agree we have to avoid overkill, but not at the risk of underkill.’

  Blair picked up some useful information about Bush’s mood from Jacques Chirac, with whom the Prime Minister breakfasted at the Elysée Palace before flying to America. Chirac, who had recently seen Bush, reported that he was ‘calm and measured’ and more impressive than the Frenchman expected. The British were relieved that Bush was not being ‘the cartoon caricature of Bush, the gunfighter reaching immediately for his six-shooter’.18

  Once Blair’s plane touched down at Andrews Air Force Base, a convoy of black Lincolns took the Prime Minister and his party into Washington. They were already getting intelligence that key figures in the administration wanted to seize on 9/11 as an opportunity to deal once and for all with Saddam Hussein. There was more to this than the British yet knew. Within twenty-four hours of the atrocities, Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defense Secretary, and Paul Wolfowitz, his number two, argued to go after Iraq immediately and pressed the case again at a weekend conclave at Camp David.19 Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, was the strongest voice against. He won the argument then. Not because Bush was against an attack on Iraq, but because he concluded that America would expect his immediate focus to be on al-Qaeda.

  Blair got to the White House too late to have the one-to-one meeting with Bush originally planned for that evening. As their entourages were ushered into the Blue Room for pre-dinner drinks, Bush took Blair to one side. They spoke by the window that looks out on the South Lawn with a view of the Washington Monument. Here was the opportunity that Blair wanted to look into the other man’s eyes. When he again stressed the necessity for a measured response with international support, what Bush said to him sounded reassuring. ‘The job in hand is al-Qaeda and the Taliban,’ said the President before adding, almost as a throwaway remark: ‘Iraq we keep for another day.’20

  Blair took this to be pleasing evidence that his strategy of engagement with the White House was proving effective. It may have encouraged him to exaggerate his assessment of his influence. In truth, he was one voice among many who persuaded Bush that he needed to deal first with Afghanistan. Bush gave Blair the broad outline of what he intended to say in his speech to the Joint Session of Congress later in the evening. This was merely a courtesy, not a consultation. The highlights of the speech had already been briefed to the White House press corps.21

  It was much the same – briefing, not consulting – at the dinner that followed. Bush dominated the conversation as he told the British how they planned to attack the terrorist sanctuaries in Afghanistan and the quasi-medieval Taliban regime in Kabul – ‘a bunch of nuts’, said Bush.22 As they ate their way through scallops and veal, Bush said he would issue an ultimatum to the Taliban to surrender bin Laden and his most senior co-conspirators, but the American President was already assuming that he wouldn’t get an answer from the regime in Kabul that satisfied him. Bush also began to scope out a ‘war on terror’ which would go much wider than Afghanistan. ‘We’ve got to make sure that al-Qaeda doesn’t have any safe haven in the world,’ he remarked. He wasn’t going to tolerate any regime that let ‘terrorists do their dirty deeds from their territory’. Blair wanted to stress the importance of carrying international opinion with them. Bush responded that he was happy to have allies on board, but they were going to do this come what may. He was clearly relishing the prospect of flattening the regime, telling the dinner that ‘bombers will be coming from every direction.’23

  Blair got nervous on behalf of his host, who was about to make the most important speech of his life. ‘Don’t you want to go off and rehearse?’ he asked the President. With a calm that struck others listening as either impressive or disturbing, Bush replied: ‘No, I’ve done that already. I know what I’m going to say.’24 Jonathan Powell thought: ‘It was like he’d had a nerve bypass.’25

  When it was time for Bush to travel over to Capitol Hill, he flattered Blair by asking the Prime Minister to accompany him in the presidential limousine. Once the cavalcade arrived, Bush went in the direction of the podium and Blair was guided to a seat in the ‘heroes’ gallery’ next to Laura Bush. He had the ego-engorging satisfaction of being the only foreign leader there that day.

  Bush delivered up an aggressive speech, declaring: ‘Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there.’ Watched by 80 million Americans, he threw down a gauntlet to the rest of the world: ‘Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.’26

  This would cause a shudder in many foreign capitals. Trailblazer was the Secret Service codename for the President and apprehension that he was a trigger-happy gunslinger was already being arous
ed by his cowboyish talk of ‘whuppin’ terrorism, ‘smokin’ out’ the killers, taking bin Laden ‘dead or alive’ and having ‘his head on a platter’. He also showed verbal clumsiness about the sensibilities of Muslim countries when he spoke of ‘a crusade’. Unlike his British visitor, Bush had not read the Koran.

  Before his domestic audience, though, the American President was hitting all the right buttons. The performance created an intensely patriotic fervour which won the roaring approval of Senators and Congressmen on both sides of the aisle. It completed a recovery in the eyes of his country from the anxieties aroused by the ineptitude of his stumbling performance in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. In the wake of the speech to Congress, Bush’s approval ratings surged higher than those enjoyed by Franklin D. Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor.27 The speech was rewarded with thirty-one standing ovations, each one accompanied by a flutter of bangs as the audience rose and its seats flipped back. One of those ovations was for Tony Blair when Bush privileged him with a reference.