Telegraph

Monday 8 Oct 2001 Issue number 45528

www.dailytelegraph.com/leaders

The end of the beginning

THE air and missile attacks on Taliban positions in Afghanistan which began last night are not hasty. Not only are they just, as President Bush and the Prime Minister both eloquently argued; they are also well planned.

Some who are reflexively hostile to the United States assumed, after September 11, that the world's greatest power would hurl itself rashly and bloodily into indiscriminate bombing. This has not happened. For almost a month, America has prepared the ground. It has identified the culprit, his associates and his backers. It has developed a military strategy and moved men and materiel into position. Conscious always that its actions require precise and comprehensible justification, it has explained to the world how it must resist terrorism.

In doing so, it has been at pains to display its friendship with Islam, as the deeply held and essentially peaceful faith of a billion people, and to be clear that this quarrel is not with any religion, nor yet a clash of civilisations, but a war for civilisation against barbarism. To this end, the United States has mobilised the backing of Nato, the promise of military support from France, Germany, Canada and Australia, the assistance, in greater and lesser ways, of 40 nations, and, above all, the help of Britain. Last night, ours was the only country joining America in direct military operations.

As Mr Blair said, our thoughts and prayers turn first, and most warmly, to our Armed Forces. And they turn, too, to all those now in Afghanistan, most of them innocent of the horror that Osama bin Laden hatched in their midst. President and Prime Minister spoke of the humanitarian dimension to what is happening, not only the need for a properly targeted response, but also for huge assistance for refugees and the hungry. We appeal to our readers' generosity over this in the article immediately below.

It was moving last night to watch the two leaders of the English-speaking world addressing their respective nations. How out of the ordinary run of politics it is to see a Labour Prime Minister praising a conservative Republican President, and how right. Almost as if there was an intended reversal of rhetorical styles, it was Mr Bush last night who was the more Churchillian, Mr Blair who eschewed the over-dramatic style of which he is sometimes guilty: both chose the tone which suited their respective roles.

How good it is, too, to hear Mr Bush celebrating in time of war the bond between our two countries which sometimes seems to weaken in time of peace. It is not a coincidence that this alliance works so smoothly in a crisis. It is based on more than the shared intelligence which is so vital to military success: it depends upon a shared culture, a common language and a common belief in the active defence of freedom. Mr Blair said that we are a peace-loving people and that is, if anything, even more true of the Americans. But both nations know from their long and free history that peace has sometimes to be fought for.

Mr Blair did well last night to remind the nation that the attacks on the World Trade Centre were the worst terrorist assault ever perpetrated against British citizens. We do not yet know the full number of British dead, but it certainly runs into three figures. The fact that so many of our citizens were working in New York is testimony to the strong links between us. The fact that most of them worked in financial services is a reminder, as Mr Blair pointed out, that one of the aims of the terrorists was the destruction of the prosperity upon which our system of free government depends. The fact that so many of them died is a direct, national reason - even if no other reason applied - why we are right to be fighting today.

This morning Britain may be, as a result of our involvement, a slightly more dangerous place. Mr Blair was reassuring, presumably with good reason, about the lack of a direct and present threat from terrorists here, but there is obviously some risk that those misguidedly angered by attacks on a Muslim state may find ways of expressing their rage. We are confident that the overwhelming majority of British Muslims will not feel this way. Their Britishness and their faith need not be in conflict. Like other British citizens, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, or nothing-very-much, they recognise the ties that bind us all together in our free and tolerant society.

There is not a great deal, here, today, that the Queen's subjects can do to help this war now beginning so far away, but it might help a little to remember Winston Churchill's wartime reminder that "The maxim of the British people is 'Business as usual'." We have been warned that this war will be long. If we behave as our two nations have always behaved when confronted jointly by evil, the eventual outcome cannot be in doubt.

-- Anonymous, October 08, 2001