http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,583255,00.html
Blair's plea: Never forget reasons for the bombing
PM to issue reminder of 'gloating' Bin Laden
Michael White, political editor
Tuesday October 30, 2001
The Guardian
Tony Blair will today make an unashamedly emotional appeal to public opinion
in Britain and around the world not to forget the "gloating menace" behind
the slaughter in Washington and New York that triggered the US-led military
action against al-Qaida and their Taliban allies.

As doubts surface about the clarity and effectiveness of the three-week
bombing of Afghanistan the prime minister will insist that the strategy is
morally right and that Britain must "stay the course" in backing the US,
confident that the campaign's declared objectives will be met "however long
it takes".

But Mr Blair's speech, to be made amid tight security in Wales this morning,
will strike an emotional note not heard since the original shock of the
hijackings which damaged the Pentagon and destroyed the World Trade Centre
on September 11.

"It is important that we never forget why we have done this, never forget
how we felt as we watched planes fly into the trade towers, never forget
those answer phone messages, never forget how we imagined how mothers told
their children they were going to die, never forget the firefighters and
police who died trying to save others," the prime minister will say.

Mr Blair plans to focus on Osama bin Laden and on Muslims, in Britain and
elsewhere, who have either shown sympathy to the al-Qaida cause or a
reluctance to countenance what No 10 sees as regrettably necessary bombing.
"Never forget the gloating menace of Osama bin Laden and his propaganda
videos, never forget the long list of countries who lost sons and daughters,
never forget they were of all faiths and none, many [of them] Muslims," he
will argue.

With his eye clearly on Muslims he is expected to add: "For it is not us who
are at war with Islam. It is al-Qaida and the Taliban who are at war with
anyone, whatever their faith, who does not share their maniacal and
fanatical view of the world."

Downing Street officials remain adamant that public opinion in Britain
remains solidly behind the tripartite military, diplomatic and humanitarian
strategy - and that they have no private polling or focus group studies
which reinforce the findings of today's Guardian/ ICM poll. But they believe
that the relentless 24-hour a day modern media cycle inclines radio, TV and
newspapers to forget root causes in their search for daily novelty, and help
their audiences to forget them too. Instead they concentrate on dissent and
short-term setbacks, as they did during the 1999 air campaign on behalf of
the Muslims of Kosovo.

Senior ministers have been reminding voters how the Jeremiahs now predicting
disaster in Afghanistan were proved wrong about Kosovo. But yesterday,
before flying to Washington, the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, went deeper
into Britain's military archive to recall allied training disasters along
the southern coasts of Britain in 1944. "We need to ask ourselves how we
would have reacted if the media had been there to film the 700 casualties in
the rehearsal for D-day," he told reporters. "Many of us, in fact, would not
be alive today. The truth is that we would have persevered then because it
would have been right so to persevere. It is right to persevere now, and we
will."

Whitehall briefers persistently down play such evident setbacks as the
weekend capture and murder by the Taliban of the Pashtun moderate, Abdul
Haq, and insist that enormous efforts are taken to avoid civilian
casualties.

"You have to pour a large cellar of salt over some of the claims made by the
Taliban in recent weeks," one said yesterday.

Mr Blair will repeat the triple goals of the attacks: to bring the September
11 conspirators to justice, if possible; to prevent the otherwise certain
repetition of such attacks; and to end Afghanistan's role as a safe haven.
That now means bringing about what briefers call "sufficient change" in the
Taliban leadership.

Insisting that the strategy is on course. Mr Blair will argue: "Whatever
faults we have, Britain is a very moral nation with a strong sense of right
and wrong. That moral fibre will defeat the fanaticism of those terrorists
and their supporters."

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