The Light’s On At Signpost. George Fraser MacDonald
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was pointed out that America was a staunch friend and ally who had stood by us in the Second World War, so were we not bound to support her now? By all means, and it would have been right and proper to stand by America in 2001 exactly as she stood by us from 1939 to 1942: with moral support, intelligence assistance, boundless good will, and all the material aid we could muster – at a price – but stopping short of joining the fight. God knows the threat to the world now does not compare to that posed by Hitler in 1940; talk of how “the world changed forever” on September 11 is so much twaddle, and Bush’s bone-headed claim that whoever was not with America was against her was simply contemptible, as though he had the right to deny the option of neutrality to anyone who chose it.
The dictatorial dragooning of my country into war seemed to me to be quite as important as the moral question of blitzing hapless Afghans; British constitutional liberties were my first concern, not the follies and heedless brutalities of America’s present leaders. I might deplore the apparent mistreatment of prisoners of war and the continued killing of Afghan civilians by unnecessary bombing, but I consoled myself that this lapse from the standards of civilised behaviour was a temporary thing resulting from the unprecedented shock of September 11, when it was brought home to the American people that their country was no longer the impregnable fortress of their imagination. They were stunned, and infuriated into an understandable thirst for revenge – never mind silly excuses about self-defence, they wanted to “kick ass”, and since Bin Laden’s was not available, and the world’s greatest superpower was incapable of finding and seizing him, which would have been the sensible and proper course, the bemused Bush had to find another ass to kick, and homed in on Afghanistan’s Taliban government with demented slogans about crusades and just causes.
Meanwhile Blair was alarming Britons with deranged rhetoric about British leadership, and “sorting out” various parts of Africa, and generally creating a new heaven and a new earth, in a speech reminiscent of Palmerston’s fictitious comic address to the Improvement Club.* This, when everyone knew that Britain hadn’t the muscle for even another Falklands campaign.
Now, after all this – my disgust and anger at the risking of British lives in Bush’s war; my indignation that millions urgently needed at home should be squandered in rebuilding the country which America had devastated; my conviction that the end being sought in Afghanistan (whatever it was) did not justify the means; my despair at the sheer ignorance of Islam displayed by Western leaders;† my doubt whether disposing of the Taliban and Bin Laden would advance the campaign against terrorism very far; my fear that America’s blind belligerence might really let the terrorist genie out of the bottle; my impatience at their inability to understand (not just in Washington but in Little Rock and Shaker Heights) that by ill-treating captives and committing the crowning folly of photographing their cruelty for all the world to see,‡ they were creating a public relations disaster, reinforcing their enemies’ hatred, and setting an example for other ruthless regimes to follow; my total lack of confidence in the leadership of the US and Britain – after all this, it will surely be concluded that I am disloyal, unpatriotic, and above all anti-American, and deserving of the wrath and scorn (often quite venomous) poured on any who dare to oppose or even to criticise Anglo-American policies. Some writers in the British press whom I normally respect waxed almost hysterical about this, damning me and my like as doves if not traitors, and crying a rousing “Gung-ho!” from their armchairs.
Well, I am not anti-American. I’m pro-American to my backbone, and I share their grief and rage at the horror of Manhattan – but I am not prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder with them or anyone else unconditionally, I am not prepared to accept their leadership when they are manifestly unfit to provide it, I am not prepared (unlike Blair) to put our soldiers’ precious lives at Bush’s disposal, and most of all, I am not prepared to regard US policies and decisions as infallible and beyond criticism. In spite of Bush’s inanities, it is possible to be a true friend without giving slavish allegiance, to recognise that the special relationship is not a bed of roses, to be eternally grateful for support in the Falklands while not forgetting Eisenhower’s despicable stab in the back at the time of Suez, and to reserve the right to disagree. It’s called democracy, but truthfully I would not expect either Bush or Blair to have much notion of it; they’ve shown none so far.
But nobody seemed to mind that; both men stood high in the opinion polls, and there was general support for Bush’s war, except among a small minority who included seventeen very old men with whom I attended a reunion shortly after the crisis began: we were the remnants of the 9th Battalion Border Regiment, part of the 17th Indian Division, the “Black Cats”, who fought through the Burma war, spearheaded the last great drive south behind the enemy lines and, in General Slim’s words, tore the Japanese Army apart. If there were seventeen good men and ready soldiers in Britain, with nothing to learn about what are called the horrors of war, and never a moment’s hesitation in going to battle in a good cause, those were they. Without exception they were against an Afghan war – not only because as one elderly Cumbrian said: “They’ll ’ev a bloody rough shift if they ga intil Afghanistan”, but because like all old soldiers who have been there and done it, they were pacifists to a man, knowing the wisdom of patience and diplomacy and only fighting when no other honourable course is open. It would have taken a very big man, a real leader, to stay America’s hand after September 11, resist the perfectly natural demand of his countrymen for vengeance, and look for a peaceful way.
Also, those seventeen old trained killers (for that is what they once were) felt a distaste at the prospect of the world’s most powerful superpower bombing one of the most primitive nations on earth into a bloody rubble; perhaps some of them remembered that the grandfathers of those Pathans and Baluch and Afghans of the Taliban had been comrades in XIVth Army.
I heard one reflecting caustically – and no doubt unfairly – that it struck a jarring note when a prime minister cocooned by the tightest security with armed police and bodyguards, talked of soldiers laying their lives on the line; that is a view straight from the slit-trench, and I was reminded of Dennis Wheatley’s “Pills of Honour” – the suicide pills to be taken by any Cabinet declaring war and so inevitably sending others to certain death. Not an option that would appeal to politicians. One would have to go back to Regulus for that kind of honour.
Of course time may prove me absolutely wrong. Perhaps posterity will acclaim Bush’s and Blair’s behaviour as courageous and statesmanlike. But I doubt it, just as I doubt (whatever the course of events in Afghanistan, whatever terrorist leaders are killed or captured, whatever so-called government exists in Kabul) whether it will be possible to talk of victory until the Palestine question, which is at the heart of the matter, has been resolved. Everyone knows that this is crucial, and that while it remains unsettled, terrorism will continue. Western leaders talk of an indefinite campaign which, although they can never admit it, is an admission that terrorism can’t be beaten. It always wins, as we have seen in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, and in the end it has to be looked at across a table, with talk of jihads and just causes forgotten, and reality faced by both sides. Easier said than done, but that’s the truth of it, and perhaps when the guns of Gaza and the West Bank are silent, as they have seldom been since I heard them as a young subaltern more than fifty years ago, it will be possible to say that the world has changed indeed.
* Lord Palmerston’s address to the Reform Club on March 7, 1854, on the eve of the Crimean War, was memorably lampooned in Punch.
† And sections of the Western media, like the American news magazine which under the heading why they hate america, told its readers that “Bin Laden’s fanatics are the offspring of failed societies”, adding that “We stand for freedom and they hate it. We are rich and they envy us. We are strong and they resent this.” God help us.