Just because US President George W. Bush says something is so doesn't make it axiomatically wrong. The man is right: "Freedom is a beautiful thing." Like many things of beauty, freedom can also be very fragile. That most basic of freedoms -- the freedom to go about your innocent business without being blown up -- was cruelly denied to the Britons and Turks killed and maimed by the bombs that ripped through Istanbul.
If the intention was also to devastate Bush's state visit to Britain, it didn't have quite that result. The bombings of the British consulate in Istanbul and HSBC bank actually had the effect of rescuing the Bush visit from vapidity. The atrocities suddenly and violently invested the Bush-Blair alliance with a renewed seriousness of resolve and purpose.
ILLUSTRATION: YU SHA
Though the red carpet rolled out for Bush had been strewn with potential banana skins, the visit did not turn into the cringing embarrassment to British Prime Minister Blair that was widely predicted. The one setpiece speech delivered by the president at the Banqueting House was more subtle, fluent, multidimensional and pitched to appeal to non-Texan ears than had been generally anticipated. Bush set out to challenge the perception of his White House as blindly unilateralist.
"In this century, as the last, nations can accomplish more together than apart," he said. Blair could have written that. Perhaps he did.
Even some of the most vigorous Bush-whackers pronounced themselves quite impressed. I would judge that he exceeded most people's expectations, even if we must allow for how grass-cutting expectations of the president are on this side of the Atlantic. The Liberal Democrats' Menzies Campbell, one of the most trenchant opponents of the war against Saddam, no Bushie he, emerged from his private talks with the president to announce that he was "most certainly surprised at the extent to which the caricature of him was inaccurate."
Beyond the purpose of demonstrating to Britain that Bush is more than a cartoon character, the visit was otherwise developing into a sequence of stilted photo-opportunities. The president was moved around in a steel bubble of ceremonial. The protesters staged their own rituals by burning the Stars and Stripes. On issues of contention, such as the trade dispute between America and Europe, the prime minister and president had no progress to announce and nothing of substance to say.
The wrangle over steel tariffs, the bogus footman's revelations that the Queen likes to feed scones to her corgis, what Nigella cooked for lunch, the pageantry and piffle was brutally placed in perspective by the blood and rubble on the streets of Istanbul.
That did not mean a complete end to the ritualizing. Blair went into default response to the bombings when he declared: "There must be no holding back, no compromise, no hesitation in confronting this menace, in attacking it wherever and whenever we can and in defeating it utterly."
Bush vowed that they were, nevertheless, winning their "war against terror." Both men reached for well-worn phrases of condemnation and oft-rehearsed pledges that there will be no capitulation to the fanatics.
Their opponents, on the streets and elsewhere, were just as predictable. The bombings were "the bloody price," "the collateral damage," the "inevitable consequence" of the actions taken by Bush, with the support of Blair, in the two years since al-Qaeda attacked the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.
Well, this much is surely true. It was not just a coincidence that the bombs were targeted on symbols of Britain while Bush was staying at Buckingham Palace. One thing we know about al-Qaeda is that it has a murderous talent for grabbing the world's attention. It is equally certain that terrorist attacks were planned on Turkey, Bush visit to Britain or no Bush visit.
The carnage in Turkey illustrates again that this is as much a civil war within the Islamic world as it is an assault on the West. Turkey is quadruply hated by Islamist extremists. It is an ally of America and Israel. Since modern Turkey rose from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, it has followed a secular path, which has been continued by its current moderate Islamic government. Istanbul is the increasingly prosperous interface between Islam and Europe.
Turkey is the one country in the region that has demonstrated that democracy and progress are fully compatible with being an Islamic nation. These are the reasons that Turkey was attacked. If the Bush visit to Britain made a difference, it was only to the timing.
There are those who suggest that these outrages are some sort of deserved "punishment" for the West's failure to deliver a resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. The answer to this is to remember that al-Qaeda was plotting and executing atrocities long before the White House was occupied by Bush.
Few around the world had heard of the then governor of Texas when Osama bin Laden put into motion the Sept. 11 attacks. Israel was led not by Ariel Sharon, but by a Labor prime minister who gave every impression of wanting to achieve a peaceful resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians.
Former US president Bill Clinton was in the Oval Office, highly energized about brokering a peace settlement in the belief that this would be his historic legacy to efface the tawdry aspects of his presidency. It was at this time, when the US was working hard for peace and hopes that it could be achieved had never been higher, that bin Laden planned his atrocities against America.
There's no denying that a resolution of the Israeli-Palestine conflict would drain much poison from the Arab view of the West. But you can't leap from there to the conclusion that al-Qaeda terrorists would then become peace-lovers. The purposes of these terrorists are best served by the continuation of that conflict.
The charge against Blair from his domestic critics is that his alliance with Bush has put Britain on the "front line" when we could have retreated to a more cowardly back seat. Truth to tell, ministers were not really shocked by the attacks in Istanbul. If anything, they have been quietly astonished that British targets have not been hit much earlier.
For this form of terrorism, the front line is wherever the bombers can strike. Islamist extremists have killed the citizens of countries that supported the removal of the Taliban and the toppling of Saddam. They have slaughtered Italian policemen in Iraq and young Australian holidaymakers in Bali.
The terrorists have been equally delighted to kill the citizens of countries that volubly opposed the military action in Iraq. They have massacred French technicians in Karachi and German tourists in Tunisia.
The hallmark of this terrorism is that it kills anywhere, anytime in any numbers that it can. The victims are American, European, African, Asian and Hispanic, Jews, Christians, Hindus, atheists -- and Muslims. In Istanbul, as so often before, these people have no compunction about murdering their own faith.
In the two years since the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, the US has been slowly learning that military superiority, however colossal, cannot by itself defeat this sort of enemy. Armadas of aircraft carriers will not stop the suicide bomber. Cooperation with allies and the use of intelligence, in every sense, will be as vital to prevailing over al-Qaeda.
In his speech at the Banqueting House, Bush revealed some signs of absorbing the force of the argument, pressed on him privately by Blair, that they have to strive to address the causes of terrorism as well as its perpetrators.
As for those protesters who toppled that papier-mache Bush in Trafalgar Square, they were made to look naive. The bombers, if they could, would happily slaughter them too. It is a delusion to think that all that is needed to make the world safe is a change to the occupants of the White House and Number 10. Charles Kennedy could be prime minister and Michael Moore might be president of the US. Al-Qaeda would carry on killing. Because, to them, freedom is an ugly thing.
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