British prime minister Tony Blair has announced that he will depart Number 10 Downing Street at the end of June, after ten years in office.
He leaves a mixed record. Any politician who has been in office for any appreciable length of time will always leave a mixed record. I leave it to the historians to assess his legacy.
Today, however, I want to talk about a speech he gave a few years ago that I, personally, regard as his finest hour.
The speech was an address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on July 17, 2003. To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Blair was the first British prime minister to make such an address since Winston Churchill visited Washington in December of 1941, just weeks after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
On each of these occasions, freedom was under attack. Yet each time, the visiting English politician made effective use of humor. Churchill began his speech by making the now-famous remark, “I cannot help reflecting that if my father had been American and my mother British, instead of the other way round, I might have got here on my own.”
Mr. Blair told a humorous anecdote about his own family. He said that his middle son, who was studying the 18th Century and the American War of Independence, had recently remarked to him: "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."
Yet both speeches were unavoidably serious in their overall tone. Churchill ended his with a stirring appeal that in the days ahead, “the American and British peoples will for their own safety and for the good of all walk together side by side in majesty, in justice and in peace.”
Blair, because the circumstances were less dire than those of 1941, could end on a more dispassionate and thoughtful note. He took the liberty of giving the American people a friendly warning – one that we should take to heart.
Britain, like the United States, had once been the world’s dominant superpower. So Mr. Blair spoke from his country’s experience when he said this:
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.
I don’t know if anyone – even Churchill – ever did a better job of summing up the importance of the special relationship between Britain and America than did Mr. Blair on this occasion.
Whatever his failings, he was a friend of America and a friend of freedom. And for me, at least, this speech was his finest hour.
