Tony Blair’s address to Congress

Editor’s note: The following is the full text of the address by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to Congress on Thursday, July 17, 2003.

Mr. Speaker
and Mr. Vice President, honorable members of Congress, I’m deeply touched by
that warm and generous welcome. That’s more than I deserve and more than I’m
used to, quite frankly.

And let me begin by thanking you most sincerely for voting to award me the
Congressional Gold Medal. But you, like me, know who the real heroes are: those
brave servicemen and women, yours and ours, who fought the war and risk their
lives still.

And our tribute to them should be measured in this way, by showing them and
their families that they did not strive or die in vain, but that through their
sacrifice future generations can live in greater peace, prosperity and hope.

Let me also express my gratitude to President Bush. Through the troubled times
since September 11 changed our world, we have been allies and friends.

Thank you, Mr. President, for your leadership.

Mr. Speaker, Sir, my thrill on receiving this award was only a little
diminished on being told that the first Congressional Gold Medal was awarded to
George Washington for what Congress called his “wise and spirited conduct” in
getting rid of the British out of Boston.

On our way down here, Senator Frist was kind enough to show me the fireplace
where, in 1814, the British had burnt the Congress Library. I know this is,
kind of, late, but sorry.

Actually, you know, my middle son was studying 18th century history and the
American War of Independence, and he said to me the other day, “You know, Lord
North, Dad, he was the British prime minister who lost us America. So just
think, however many mistakes you’ll make, you’ll never make one that bad.”

Members of Congress, I feel a most urgent sense of mission about today’s world.

September 11 was not an isolated event, but a tragic prologue, Iraq another
act, and many further struggles will be set upon this stage before it’s over.

There never has been a time when the power of America was so necessary or so
misunderstood, or when, except in the most general sense, a study of history
provides so little instruction for our present day.

We were all reared on battles between great warriors, between great nations,
between powerful forces and ideologies that dominated entire continents. And
these were struggles for conquest, for land, or money, and the wars were fought
by massed armies. And the leaders were openly acknowledged, the outcomes
decisive.

Today, none of us expect our soldiers to fight a war on our own territory. The
immediate threat is not conflict between the world’s most powerful nations.

And why? Because we all have too much to lose. Because technology,
communication, trade and travel are bringing us ever closer together. Because
in the last 50 years, countries like yours and mine have tripled their growth
and standard of living. Because even those powers like Russia or China or India
can see the horizon, the future wealth, clearly and know they are on a steady
road toward it. And because all nations that are free value that freedom, will
defend it absolutely, but have no wish to trample on the freedom of others.

We are bound together as never before. And this coming together provides us
with unprecedented opportunity but also makes us uniquely vulnerable.

And the threat comes because in another part of our globe there is shadow and
darkness, where not all the world is free, where many millions suffer under
brutal dictatorship, where a third of our planet lives in a poverty beyond
anything even the poorest in our societies can imagine, and where a fanatical
strain of religious extremism has arisen, that is a mutation of the true and
peaceful faith of Islam.

And because in the combination of these afflictions a new and deadly virus has
emerged. The virus is terrorism whose intent to inflict destruction is
unconstrained by human feeling and whose capacity to inflict it is enlarged by
technology.

This is a battle that 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 the end, it is not our power alone that will defeat this evil. Our ultimate
weapon is not our guns, but our beliefs.

There is a myth that though we love freedom, others don’t; 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…

Anywhere, anytime 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.”

And it is this sense of justice that makes moral the love of liberty.

In some cases where our security is under direct threat, we will have recourse
to arms. In others, it will be by force of reason. But in all cases, to the
same end: that the liberty we seek is not for some but for all, for that is the
only true path to victory in this struggle.

But first we must explain the danger.

Our new world rests on order. The danger is disorder. And in today’s world, it
can now spread like contagion.

The terrorists and the states that support them don’t have large armies or
precision weapons; they don’t need them. Their weapon is chaos.

The purpose of terrorism is not the single act of wanton destruction. It is the
reaction it seeks to provoke: economic collapse, the backlash, the hatred, the
division, the elimination of tolerance, until societies cease to reconcile
their differences and become defined by them. Kashmir, the Middle East,
Chechnya, Indonesia, Africa–barely a continent or nation is unscathed.

The risk is that terrorism and states developing weapons of mass destruction
come together. And when people say, “That risk is fanciful,” I say we know the
Taliban supported Al Qaida. 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.

But precisely because the threat is new, it isn’t obvious. It turns upside-down
our concepts of how we should act and when, and it crosses the frontiers of
many nations. So just as it redefines our notions of security, so it must
refine our notions of diplomacy.

There is no more dangerous theory in international politics than that we need
to balance the power of America with other competitive powers; different poles
around which nations gather.

Such a theory may have made sense in 19th-century Europe. It was perforce the
position in the Cold War.

Today, it is an anachronism to be discarded like traditional theories of
security. And it is dangerous because it is not rivalry but partnership we
need; a common will and a shared purpose in the face of a common threat.

And I believe any alliance must start with America and Europe. If Europe and
America are together, the others will work with us. If we split, the rest will
play around, play us off and nothing but mischief will be the result of it.

You may think after recent disagreements it can’t be done, but the debate in
Europe is open. Iraq showed that when, never forget, many European nations supported
our action.

And it shows it still when those that didn’t agreed Resolution 1483 in the
United Nations for Iraq’s reconstruction.

Today, German soldiers lead in Afghanistan, French soldiers lead in the Congo
where they stand between peace and a return to genocide.

So we should not minimize the differences, but we should not let them confound
us either.

You know, people ask me after the past months when, let’s say, things were a
trifle strained in Europe, “Why do you persist in wanting Britain at the center
of Europe?” And I say, “Well, maybe if the U.K. were a group of islands 20
miles off Manhattan, I might feel differently. But actually, we’re 20 miles off
Calais and joined by a tunnel.”

We are part of Europe, and we want to be. But we also want to be part of
changing Europe.

Europe has one potential for weakness. For reasons that are obvious, we spent
roughly a thousand years killing each other in large numbers.

The political culture of Europe is inevitably rightly based on compromise.
Compromise is a fine thing except when based on an illusion. And I don’t
believe you can compromise with this new form of terrorism.

But Europe has a strength. It is a formidable political achievement. Think of
the past and think of the unity today. Think of it preparing to reach out even
to Turkey–a nation of vastly different culture, tradition, religion–and
welcome it in.

But my real point is this: Now Europe is at the point of transformation. Next
year, 10 new countries will join. Romania and Bulgaria will follow.

Why will these new European members transform Europe? Because their scars are
recent, their memories strong, their relationship with freedom still one of
passion, not comfortable familiarity.

They believe in the trans-Atlantic alliance. They support economic reform. They
want a Europe of nations, not a super state. They are our allies and they are
yours. So don’t give up on Europe. Work with it.

To be a serious partner, Europe must take on and defeat the anti-Americanism
that sometimes passes for its political discourse. And what America must do is
show that this is a partnership built on persuasion, not command.

Then the other great nations of our world and the small will gather around in
one place, not many. And our understanding of this threat will become theirs.
And the United Nations can then become what it should be: an instrument of
action as well as debate.

The Security Council should be reformed. We need a new international regime on
the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

And we need to say clearly to United Nations members: “If you engage in the
systematic and gross abuse of human rights in defiance of the U.N. charter, you
cannot expect to enjoy the same privileges as those that conform to it.”

I agree. It is not the coalition that determines the mission, but the mission
the coalition. But let us start preferring a coalition and acting alone if we
have to, not the other way around.

True, winning wars is not easier that way, but winning the peace is.

And we have to win both. And you have an extraordinary record of doing so.

Who helped Japan renew, or Germany reconstruct, or Europe get back on its feet
after World War II? America.

So when we invade Afghanistan or Iraq, our responsibility does not end with
military victory.

Finishing the fighting is not finishing the job.

So if Afghanistan needs more troops from the international community to police
outside Kabul, our duty is to get them.

Let us help them eradicate their dependency on the poppy, the crop whose wicked
residue turns up on the streets of Britain as heroin to destroy young British
lives, as much as their harvest warps the lives of Afghans.

We promised Iraq democratic government. We will deliver it.

We promised them the chance to use their oil wealth to build prosperity for all
their citizens, not a corrupt elite, and we will do so. We will stay with these
people so in need of our help until the job is done.

And then reflect on this: How hollow would the charges of American imperialism
be when these failed countries are and are seen to be transformed from states
of terror to nations of prosperity, from governments of dictatorship to
examples of democracy, from sources of instability to beacons of calm.

And how risible would be the claims that these were wars on Muslims if the
world could see these Muslim nations still Muslim, but with some hope for the
future, not shackled by brutal regimes whose principal victims were the very
Muslims they pretended to protect?

It would be the most richly observed advertisement for the values of freedom we
can imagine. When we removed the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, this was not
imperialism. For these oppressed people, it was their liberation.

And why can the terrorists even mount an argument in the Muslim world that it
isn’t?

Because there is one cause terrorism rides upon, a cause they have no belief in
but can manipulate. I want to be very plain: This terrorism will not be
defeated without peace in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine.

Here it is that the poison is incubated. Here it is that the extremist is able
to confuse in the mind of a frighteningly large number of people the case for a
Palestinian state and the destruction of Israel, and to translate this moreover
into a battle between East and West, Muslim, Jew and Christian.

May this never compromise the security of the state of Israel.

The state of Israel should be recognized by the entire Arab world, and the vile
propaganda used to indoctrinate children, not just against Israel but against
Jews, must cease.

You cannot teach people hate and then ask them to practice peace. But neither
can you teach people peace except by according them dignity and granting them
hope.

Innocent Israelis suffer. So do innocent Palestinians.

The ending of Saddam’s regime in Iraq must be the starting point of a new
dispensation for the Middle East: Iraq, free and stable; Iran and Syria, who
give succor to the rejectionist men of violence, made to realize that the world
will no longer countenance it, that the hand of friendship can only be offered
them if they resile completely from this malice, but that if they do, that hand
will be there for them and their people; the whole of region helped toward
democracy. And to symbolize it all, the creation of an independent, viable and
democratic Palestinian state side by side with the state of Israel.

What the president is doing in the Middle East is tough but right.

And let me at this point thank the president for his support, and that of President
Clinton before him, and the support of members of this Congress, for our
attempts to bring peace to Northern Ireland.

You know, one thing I’ve learned about peace processes: They’re always
frustrating, they’re often agonizing, and occasionally they seem hopeless. But
for all that, having a peace process is better than not having one.

And why has a resolution of Palestine such a powerful appeal across the world?
Because it embodies an even-handed approach to justice, just as when this
president recommended and this Congress supported a $15 billion increase in
spending on the world’s poorest nations to combat HIV/AIDS. It was a statement
of concern that echoed rightly around the world.

There can be no freedom for Africa without justice and no justice without
declaring war on Africa’s poverty, disease and famine with as much vehemence as
we removed the tyrant and the terrorists.

In Mexico in September, the world should unite and give us a trade round that
opens up our markets. I’m for free trade, and I’ll tell you why: because we
can’t say to the poorest people in the world, “We want you to be free, but just
don’t try to sell your goods in our market.”

And because ever since the world started to open up, it has prospered. And that
prosperity has to be environmentally sustainable, too.

You know, I remember at one of our earliest international meetings, a European
prime minister telling President Bush that the solution was quite simple: Just
double the tax on American gasoline.

Your president gave him a most eloquent look.

It reminded me of the first leader of my party, Keir Hardy, in the early part
of the 20th century.

He was a man who used to correspond with the Pankhursts, the great campaigners
for women’s votes.

And shortly before the election, June 1913, one of the Pankhursts sisters wrote
to Hardy saying she had been studying Britain carefully and there was a
worrying rise in sexual immorality linked to heavy drinking. So she suggested
he fight the election on the platform of votes for women, chastity for men and
prohibition for all.

He replied saying, “Thank you for your advice. The electoral benefits of which
are not immediately discernible.”

We all get that kind of advice, don’t we?

But frankly, we need to go beyond even Kyoto, and science and technology is the
way.

Climate change, deforestation, the voracious drain on natural resources cannot
be ignored. Unchecked, these forces will hinder the economic development of the
most vulnerable nations first and ultimately all nations.

So we must show the world that we are willing to step up to these challenges
around the world and in our own backyards.

Members of Congress, if this seems a long way from the threat of terror and
weapons of mass destruction, it is only to say again that the world security
cannot be protected without the world’s heart being one. So America must listen
as well as lead. But, members of Congress, don’t ever apologize for your
values.

Tell the world why you’re proud of America. Tell them when the Star-Spangled
Banner starts, Americans get to their feet, Hispanics, Irish, Italians, Central
Europeans, East Europeans, Jews, Muslims, white, Asian, black, those who go
back to the early settlers and those whose English is the same as some New York
cab driver’s I’ve dealt with … but whose sons and daughters could run for
this Congress.

Tell them why Americans, one and all, stand upright and respectful. Not because
some state official told them to, but because whatever race, color, class or
creed they are, being American means being free. That’s why they’re proud.

As Britain knows, all predominant power seems for a time invincible, but, in
fact, it is transient.

The question is: What do you leave behind?

And what you can bequeath to this anxious world is the light of liberty.

That is what this struggle against terrorist groups or states is about. We’re
not fighting for domination. We’re not fighting for an American world, though
we want a world in which America is at ease. We’re not fighting for
Christianity, but against religious fanaticism of all kinds.

And this is not a war of civilizations, because each civilization has a unique
capacity to enrich the stock of human heritage.

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.

That’s what we’re fighting for. And it’s a battle worth fighting.

And I know it’s hard on America, and in some small corner of this vast country,
out in Nevada or Idaho or these places I’ve never been to, but always wanted to
go…

I know out there there’s a guy getting on with his life, perfectly happily,
minding his own business, saying to you, the political leaders of this country,
“Why me? And why us? And why America?”

And the only answer is, “Because destiny put you in this place in history, in
this moment in time, and the task is yours to do.”

And our job, my nation that watched you grow, that you fought alongside and now
fights alongside you, that takes enormous pride in our alliance and great
affection in our common bond, our job is to be there with you.

You are not going to be alone. We will be with you in this fight for liberty.

We will be with you in this fight for liberty. And if our spirit is right and
our courage firm, the world will be with us.

Thank you.