Shoulder-to-Shoulder – Ten years on from 9/11

By Alex White / @iamalexwhite

“My father’s generation went through the Blitz. They know what it is like to suffer this deep tragedy and attack. There was one country and one people which stood by us at that time. That country was America and those people were the American people. As you stood by us in those days, we stand side by side with you now”

So said Tony Blair, at the time the most respected statesman in the global community of politics. What he spoke of was more than just offering the US a consoling hand; it set out a doctrine which would both plague his premiership and strengthen the bond between us and our sister nation for the next decade.

The ten years – extraordinary, tumultuous years – which followed the tragedy of 9/11 were not defined by terrorism. We experienced a heightened awareness of a new terror threat, but what we must also take away is a sense of united courage.

Two of the biggest sticking points in British politics – which will help and hinder future governments – is our individuality, and our willingness to contribute to a better world alongside other nations. It creates ugly paradoxes of which we cannot free ourselves. We aren’t in Europe, but we work with Europe. We aren’t America’s loyal ‘poodle’, but we are more than prepared to stand alongside America. That is what has defined the past decade. And it is something we should embrace, not push away.

On September 10^th 2001 that was not a pressing issue. But with co-ordinated chaos and sheer evil, Islamist militants ensured that the next decade would be one of soul-searching for Britain, America and Europe.

What presaged that decade was the most horrific attack on the free world we have seen outside of the World Wars. It was – as Tony Blair epitomised – an attack on all of us who stand for democracy, law and order and freedom. His words speak truths which should not be thought differently of for the controversy over him taking us to war. It is difficult, post-Iraq and post-Afghanistan, to remember what the public sentiment was in the aftermath of the towers’ collapse. Shoulder-to-shoulder is how the then-Prime Minister described Britain alongside the USA. Out of conflict, not comfort, come your strongest alliances he would later claim in his memoirs. That is where we must take courage from.

Our relationship with the US has been parodied, criticised and loathed. The EU is sceptical of it. The Arab world is sceptical of it. China, Russia – indeed the whole BRIC group of nations – are growing at a pace once set by us and the US. This is a changing world, but now is not the time to jump ship on how we position ourselves on the international stage.

The confusion, post-invasion, in Iraq; the lack of progress, post-invasion, in Afghanistan. These are sticks with which critics beat the America/Britain alliance. We who believe in that very alliance – that it can be a force for good, both economically at home and militarily abroad – should not let it blur our vision of what can still be a ‘special’ relationship, not matter how horrible that term has become.

Britain and the US, as well as other coalition forces, did the right thing in both wars. In Iraq, we toppled Saddam Hussein who refused to conform to UN weapons laws. Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a dictator who played ‘Down With America’ messages across Iraq State TV after the attacks in 2001 is not someone you keep in power. In Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda’s influence fell with the Taliban. Osama bin Laden, of great symbolic importance to militants worldwide – the elusive figurehead whom the mighty West couldn’t catch – is dead.

Ten years on, we are in danger of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with nobody. A Conservative government keen to keep the EU issue at arm’s length, coupled with an American President too focused on domestic issues makes our situation precarious. At times of conflict – and who can deny that these dire economic straits contribute to some form of conflict of interests – we must stand, as we did on September 11th, shoulder-to-shoulder with those who share our values. There are new challenges for the new decade, ones which are closer to how we operate as states, but no less real and certainly no less testing. As we face emerging markets we must learn to share the world. We can do that alongside America.

Shoulder-to-shoulder. The past decade must inspire that image, not taint it.