Sunday, Nov. 23, 2003

A Day Of Terror Tests The Alliance

By J.F.O. McALLISTER

At 9:30 GMT on Thursday morning, two notes were delivered to the intimate, cream-paneled room at 10 Downing Street where the British Cabinet has met since 1856: one note for the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw; another for Prime Minister Tony Blair, informing them that bombs in Istanbul had struck the British consulate and the local office of the London-based bank HSBC. A roll call of consular employees had turned up four missing and likely dead, including the consul general, Roger Short. An hour later, when George W. Bush arrived for talks with Blair, he pulled the Prime Minister close for a second before posing for the cameras, offering condolences for the devastation.

The whole point of terror is politics; demoralize your foes, embolden your allies, use the media to magnify the punch of mass murder. The terrorists had got in the first salvo in what turned out to be a day of global argument about what kind of world we are going to have. Their timing showed al-Qaeda's usual grim savvy: convulsing Turkey, a Muslim country the jihadists loathe because it's moderate, belongs to NATO and wants to join the E.U.; hitting British targets in a big way for the first time, at the high point of Bush's state visit — which was already fraught because so many Brits (56%, according to a new TIME/CNN poll) don't support him or his policies.

"Hesitation, uncertainty, confusion and, if possible, fear — that's the terrorists' goal," says a French terrorism investigator. Partly, for a few hours at least, they succeeded. The Istanbul stock market plunged and was closed. American and British authorities told their citizens to stay away. In Turkey, and in the archipelago of moderate Arab opinion which Washington wants to grow into a democratic Middle East, one more brick had been taken out of the foundation of confidence upon which open and prosperous societies must be built. Al-Qaeda was proclaiming a deeply unsettling message: We are not licked, not even close.

At a press conference a few hours later, Bush and Blair delivered their rebuttal. It was a stern vision of global struggle every bit as sweeping, in its way, as al-Qaeda's. "This terrorism is the 21st century threat," said Blair. "It is a war that strikes at the heart of all that we hold dear, and there is only one response that is possible or rational: to meet their will to inflict terror with a greater will to defeat it; to confront their philosophy of hate with our own of tolerance and freedom ... to stand side by side with the United States and our other allies, to rid our world of this evil once and for all." He pivoted smoothly, too smoothly for some, from Istanbul to Baghdad: "What this latest terrorist outrage shows us is that this is a war; its main battleground is Iraq." Bush, speaking with confidence, economy and force, emphasized an Iraq connection too. "Our mission in Iraq is noble and it is necessary. No act of thugs or killers will change our resolve or alter their fate. A free Iraq will be free of them. We will finish the job we have begun."
Bush and Blair have two powerful arguments about Iraq: it will get worse if the coalition just pulls out, and that would be a moral and practical victory for Islamic terrorists. "They view the rise of democracy in Iraq as a powerful threat to their ambitions," Bush said. But another loud voice clamoring for attention last Thursday — the antiwar crowd in excess of 100,000 that streamed peacefully through London before pulling down a papier-mâché statue of Bush in Trafalgar Square — showed those arguments still leave many cold. Absent Saddam's weapons of mass destruction — an absence Bush ignored in his well-received London foreign-policy address — many protesters feel Bush and Blair lack the moral authority to lead a long twilight struggle against terror. Debbie Simmons, 46, a project manager for the World Bank, said: "I've never been on a march before. I wasn't against going to war in Iraq because I believed Blair. Now I feel I've been lied to."

Even before the Istanbul blast, according to the TIME/CNN poll, 57% of Britons thought that close ties with the U.S. increased their risk of terrorist attack. So among the protesters, news of the bombings evoked sympathy but not surprise. "Bush should expect it," contended Sarah Wild, a 20-year-old student from Sheffield. Nearby a placard read, terrorism thrives on desperation — your war increases it. Bush and Blair fought that argument, but on the Continent, some officials echoed it. August Hanning, head of the German foreign intelligence service, said last week that Iraq is creating "very fertile ground" for al-Qaeda, and that the U.S. is "about to lose the fight for the hearts and minds" of the region.

Bush saw and heard none of the protests. His security cordon was so intense — over 5,000 police, handpicked audiences, no unscripted encounters until he reached a pub in County Durham on his final day — that his trip was conducted in a "transmit only" bubble. Even from Blair, with whom he clearly feels a close bond, there was an odd isolation. Blair has taken a tremendous pounding for sticking with Bush. He asked for help on this trip in cutting steel tariffs and granting fairer trials to the nine British detainees at Guantánamo, and Bush gave him nothing. On Guantánamo, even after a deal had been struck on the eve of the trip between Bush's national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and her British counterpart, Nigel Sheinwald, Bush backed down when the Pentagon balked, leaving the Brits quietly exasperated. Bush says they'll work it out later.

In London last week, a gathering was held to celebrate the 50th year of Marshall scholarships, which have brought more than 1,400 young Americans to Britain as the official gesture of thanks for the Marshall Plan — the almost $100 billion investment in reconstructing postwar Europe that some experts cite as a rough guide for the huge task of modernizing and democratizing the Middle East which the Bush Administration has set for itself. Colin Powell, another soldier-statesman who venerates Marshall, was supposed to receive a medal and give the keynote speech. Citing "security concerns" — hard to figure since Prince Charles was there — and despite a plea from Blair's chief of staff, Powell canceled. That left a distinctly sour taste among a big crowd of pro-Americans, precisely the people the U.S. needs right now. It was a small incident, but not isolated. Can another Marshall Plan be constructed, or a global alliance against hesitation, uncertainty, confusion and fear be forged, by leaders in bubbles who have trouble even reaching out to their very best friends?