Monday will mark the 22nd anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks and despite the passage of time, most of us will immediately remember where we were on that fateful day when the terrible news came through.
I was in a car with my producer on the way to the TUC conference in Brighton, where then Prime Minister Tony Blair was due to speak that afternoon.
When I had to cover live coverage of the Labor conference on BBC TV a few weeks later, I thought perhaps some interesting quotes could be picked up from Blair’s appearance before the union barons.
We were about half an hour outside of Brighton when the classical radio station that softened our journey south interrupted its programming to report that a plane had collided with one of the Twin Towers in New York. The first impression was that it was an accident.
“But they say it’s a bright, sunny morning,” I noted to my producer. “Doesn’t look like an accident to me.” We accelerated.
On the day of the terrorist attacks, I was in a car with my producer on the way to the TUC conference in Brighton, where then Prime Minister Tony Blair was due to speak that afternoon, writes ANDREW NEIL
By the time we reached the BBC’s makeshift newsroom in the Brighton conference centre, another plane had hit the second tower. That put an end to all talk of accidents.
The conference was stunned into silence by the time Blair took the stage. He explained that he would have to return to London immediately because there were rumors that our capital could also be attacked, but added that he knew the TUC would like to express its sympathy and solidarity with the president and the American people.
The conference went up to a tumultuous standing ovation to do just that.
“If he goes back to London, I’ll go back too,” I told my producer.
As I descended the back stairs, I encountered Blair, who broke away from his security staff to say a few words.
“You know America well, Andrew,” he said, straight to the point. “What do you think happened?”
“I have no doubts, Prime Minister,” I replied. “It’s Al Qaeda.”
“Why are you so sure about that?”
‘Because it has long been an ambition of al-Qaeda to take down the World Trade Center. Key figures behind the 1993 Twin Towers bombing had ties to it.
‘The van containing the bomb was placed under the North Tower where they believed it would crash into the South Tower, destroying both and killing thousands. That attack failed. This one worked.’
“I didn’t know that,” Blair said. His security team was now growing impatient and wanted to help him out of the building.
“You better go,” I said.
But as he turned and walked down the stairs, I shouted, “Prime Minister!”
He turned and looked at me, still walking away.
“Remember, shoulder to shoulder with America,” I said.
He nodded. “Shoulder to shoulder,” he repeated.
That evening, at home in London, I watched Blair broadcast to the nation.
“Tonight we stand shoulder to shoulder with America,” he said gravely. I allowed myself a brief smile on a gloomy day.
I am sure that by then Blair was aware of the undeniable link with Al-Qaeda. The mastermind of the 1993 bombing, Ramzi Yousef, had spent time in an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan.
His uncle, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, had given him advice and assistance, and in the aftermath of September 11, it was quickly determined that the uncle had been the primary architect of that far more devastating and unfortunately successful attack.
A color guard took place Friday during a Pentagon Staff Memorial Observance ceremony
More than twenty years later, at a conference in London this week, I encountered Condoleezza Rice, President George W. Bush’s shrewd national security adviser and secretary of state, two successive, powerful positions that have kept her on the front row. of his presidency while waging his War on Terror.
When asked whether we had now won that war, Rice replied that by and large we had, at least when it comes to Islamic terror against the West.
It seemed like a bold claim considering the world still seems to be awash in terrorist attacks. But upon reflection, and with a few caveats, I came to the conclusion that she was right.
Of course, America has made many serious mistakes on the way to this kind of victory. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a catastrophic mistake, a major setback that unleashed a whole new wave of terrorist attacks.
President Biden’s despicable flight from Afghanistan two summers ago, making the return of the Taliban inevitable, must have emboldened Islamist terrorists around the world.
And they are still active, from the no man’s land that forms the Iraqi-Syrian border to the vast desert regions of the Sahel that stretch across Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.
But the Sahel’s extremists are more concerned with fighting domestic conflicts and terrorizing local innocent civilians than waging war against the West.
Even the Taliban seem more willing to oppress Afghan women as part of their medieval agenda than to recreate the safe haven the country once was for al-Qaeda.
US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice says the War on Terror has been won, at least when it comes to Islamic terror in the West
The Middle East, which has for so long been the breeding ground for much of the terrorism that has gripped us, is increasingly dominated by the prosperous Gulf states, which want to be known as beacons of prosperity and sources of investment rather than crucibles of barbarism.
The United Arab Emirates has already made peace with Israel. I understand that Saudi Arabia will do the same soon, perhaps before the year is out. Why would they still want to be infected by terrorism?
Thus, the terrorists’ ability to plan, access the resources and secure the logistics necessary for ‘spectacular’ attacks such as 9/11 has been severely eroded – and to that extent the Western world is indeed a safer place than she was.
Open, democratic societies will always be vulnerable to the rogue state that operates with limited resources and no support network. They can still inflict atrocities on us, as we sadly discovered on that terrible May night at the Manchester Arena six years ago.
But overall, major terrorist attacks on Western democracies are on the decline, and may remain so for a long time.
It is not unrealistic to hope, or foolishly arrogant to think, that Islamic State and its ilk will side with the IRA or Eta, the terrorist separatists of Spain’s Basque region.
They have cruelly and needlessly murdered many people, but ultimately they have failed to impose their objectives on democratic governments – and the wiser heads among them have come to terms with the futility of their violence.
Terrorist wars do not stop overnight. Who knows what bloody eruptions await us? But the greater threat to our democratic way of life today is not terrorism, but a revanchistic Russia and an aggressive China.
Ahead of the anniversary on Monday, the ‘Tribute in Light’ ceremony will be tested in New York
We’ve come a long way since September 11, and despite the setbacks we’ve brought upon ourselves, there is progress to celebrate.
And lessons to learn. Above all, winning the peace is as important as winning the war – perhaps even more important.
America and its allies won the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, but lost peace in both places, prolonging the War on Terror. In stark contrast, America lost the war in Vietnam but won the peace – the Vietnamese are now one of America’s most important political and economic allies in the Pacific Rim.
As we remember on Monday those who lost their lives on that terrible day 22 years ago, we can take some comfort in knowing that we have finally largely won the war against Islamist terror.
Winning the peace – which means eradicating as best we can the conditions that allow terrorism to take root and even flourish – will probably be a tiny bit more difficult.