By: Mary Mostert Analyst (bannerofliberty.com)
July 18, 2003
I suspect those who have been busy trying to convince the world that Tony Blair should be kicked out of 10 Downing Street for his role in ousting Saddam Hussein’s tyranny were not very happy with the warm applause and standing ovations he received in his speech to Congress yesterday when he firmly spoke up for freedom and the unalienable rights of all mankind.
He reminded us that the battle against terrorism “can't be fought or won only by armies. We are so much more powerful in all conventional ways than the terrorists, yet even in all our might, we are taught humility.”
In recent days we have seen a full-scale attack on both Tony Blair and George W. Bush by politicians in both countries who have tried to convince us that these two leaders have “lied” about the threat Saddam Hussein posed.
“There is a myth that though we love freedom, others don't;” Blair said, and “that our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture; that freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law are American values, or Western values; that Afghan women were content under the lash of the Taliban; that Saddam was somehow beloved by his people; that Milosevic was Serbia's savior.“Members of Congress, ours are not Western values, they are the universal values of the human spirit. And anywhere, any time ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police.
“The spread of freedom is the best security for the free. It is our last line of defense and our first line of attack. And just as the terrorist seeks to divide humanity in hate, so we have to unify it around an idea. And that idea is liberty.
“We must find the strength to fight for this idea and the compassion to make it universal.
“Abraham Lincoln said, 'Those that deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.'”
As I listened to Tony Blair, I was reminded of another British prime minister in the days of my childhood. It was June 1940. Adolph Hitler with lightening speed had invaded and conquered Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and France. The British Army and 120,000 French troops were trapped at Dunkirk and had just been rescued by the British Navy. The Anti-War debates of the 1930s were overtaken by war all over Europe.
At that point the man who had tried with little success to warn Britain of the danger posed by Hitler had become Prime Minister, replacing the “peace-loving,” appeasement oriented Neville Chamberlain. That man, Winston Churchill, stood before the House of Commons and outlined the bleak future ahead for Britain, because she had done nothing as Adolph Hitler perfected his war machine. Then he challenged the nation saying:
“The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.“Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’” Prime Minister Tony Blair’s speech before the U.S. Congress on July 17, 2003, sixty three years later, is a speech that will go down in history along side Winston Churchill’s “This was their finest hour” speech. Blair warned:
“When people say, 'That risk is fanciful,' I say we know the Taliban supported al Qaeda. We know Iraq under Saddam gave haven to and supported terrorists. We know there are states in the Middle East now actively funding and helping people, who regard it as God's will in the act of suicide to take as many innocent lives with them on their way to God's judgment.
“Some of these states are desperately trying to acquire nuclear weapons. We know that companies and individuals with expertise sell it to the highest bidder, and we know that at least one state, North Korea, lets its people starve while spending billions of dollars on developing nuclear weapons and exporting the technology abroad.
“This isn't fantasy, it is 21st-century reality, and it confronts us now.
“Can we be sure that terrorism and weapons of mass destruction will join together? Let us say one thing: If we are wrong, we will have destroyed a threat that at its least is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive.
“But if our critics are wrong, if we are right, as I believe with every fiber of instinct and conviction I have that we are, and we do not act, then we will have hesitated in the face of this menace when we should have given leadership. That is something history will not forgive.” So why are we fighting this World War on terrorism, of which Iraq is a part? Blair defined it simply:
“We are fighting for the inalienable right of humankind -- black or white, Christian or not, left, right or a million different -- to be free, free to raise a family in love and hope, free to earn a living and be rewarded by your efforts, free not to bend your knee to any man in fear, free to be you so long as being you does not impair the freedom of others.”
To those comfortable American who demand to know “Why me? Why us? And Why America?” Tony Blair answered:
“Because destiny put you in this place in history, in this moment in time, and the task is yours to do.”
And, if we don’t seize this moment, and perform this work, we will certainly end up living in a world controlled by tyrants like Saddam Hussein who managed, without nuclear weapons, to kill more than 1.5 million other human beings in the past 20 years.
To comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com