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.
‡ Mr Rumsfeld’s contention that the Afghan captives were not prisoners of war prompted an interesting question: would he define the civilian farmers of Lexington and Concord who fired the first shots in the American Revolution as “unlawful combatants”, and would he have regarded as “appropriate” the hooding, blindfolding, caging, and sensory deprivation of any taken prisoner?
NEVER MIND PEERAGES, can law-making be bought? If an animal rights organisation were to contribute to a governing party’s funds, would this assist the passage of a bill against parrot-kicking or butterfly-baiting or some similar blood sport? And if the Fruit of the Month Society made a similar donation, would this win government support for lowering the age of consent for homosexuals? I ask these questions in all innocence, and am ready to be told that it is disgraceful even to mention them – which usually means that the question has hit uncomfortably close to home.
On this head, I was an interested observer of the campaign to ban fox-hunting, deer-hunting, coursing, etc., and found myself wondering whether the proposed bill was the result of judicious investment or just mental derangement. I have never hunted, and never would, but I have a foolishly sentimental affection for it which comes of reading Surtees and Trollope and singing at school hearty songs like “Drink, Puppy, Drink”, and “A-Hunting We Will Go”, and of course “John Peel”, and I should be sorry to learn that they were no longer sung in this politically correct age.
This is very wrong of me, but there it is. I haven’t shot an animal since I was nine, when I nailed a rabbit and promptly burst into tears. And once I had my copy ruthlessly spiked when I was sent to write an article celebrating the Waterloo Cup, and turned in a passionate denunciation of coursing.
So I understand the position of the anti-blood-sports people (and would gladly shoot those of them who commit evil acts of terrorism, but that’s not germane to the argument). I’m neutral to the extent that I don’t give a dam about the morality of hunting, but as a country lover I have to defend rural traditions and the right of people to make a living from them. But my real interest, I confess, would be to watch the attempted enforcement of a hunting ban, something which I suspect the banners haven’t really thought about. I’m not sure how the police are going to proceed against law-breaking huntsmen – when they assemble, when they set off, when they first get on the trail of a fox, or when they kill it? Assuming they do. I would truly enjoy the sight of PC Plod in pursuit of the Blencathra, running up and down the fells crying: “Stop, in the name of Blair!”
I mustn’t be cynical, or wonder why the government debated fox-hunting while the countryside was dying from foot and mouth disease; whom the gods would destroy they first make mad. But I would like to know why the ban-the-hunt brigade don’t demand the outlawing of angling, which is horribly cruel, consisting as it does of the slow torturing to death of a fish with a barbed hook in its jaws. Could it be that while they inveigh against people who chase foxes and deer and blow the hell out of grouse and pheasants, on the erroneous assumption that they are all “toffs” and fair game, the antis are scared to tackle the anglers, vast numbers of whom are working-class? Of course it is. They know, too, that a bill against angling wouldn’t stand a chance – but being men and women of stainless principle, shouldn’t they try for one, or at least state boldly where they stand? Or don’t they care about fish?
