He’s on his way out, so he’s going for broke. Distilling some of the remarks he made at an important speech that got little attention at the time, Blair now pointedly calls out his cohort—the elites of the West:

Western leaders are increasingly aware of the global nature of the struggle against Islamic extremism led by Iran, but within Western public opinion “there is a big battle to be won.”

This somber assessment was offered here Sunday by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in an interview with Haaretz. The British leader, who just recently announced his intention to step down within a year, acknowledged that his own domestic political difficulties were closely tied with this “ideological battle” for British and Western hearts and minds.

This is a far-ranging interview that he gave Ha’aretz, and it’s worth reading the whole thing.

Blair thinks it can take a long time (up to a generation) to get people to come around to understanding things differently. But that we must persist in speaking out and in persuading them.

And as I said recently in my L.A. speech, the first way to win a battle is to realize you’re in a battle. That’s part of the trouble: We don’t yet really understand this is a global movement and it requires a global strategy to beat it.

One other point - you can’t beat it simply by security or military means. This is an ideological battle. It’s got to be taken out to the enemy. And that’s why I say it’s important for us always to be the ones who have got a political strategy running alongside the military strategy. We should never, ever, whatever the technical difficulties, let the political strategy fall away.

We in our paper see your political difficulties and the battle of ideology as very closely linked. We have witnessed with a certain amount of sorrow your inability to inculcate this awareness in your own public opinion and among Western European opinion.
Yeah, but you know in the end sometimes it takes people a long time to wake up. And sometimes these struggles go over a whole generation, almost. It’s less important what my position is - but as you say rightly, I expect it indicates that we’ve got a big job to do.

But I think that underneath opinion is changing. On the surface I agree at the moment, no, it isn’t. But underneath people are beginning to see it change. Now my own view is that if we were able to revive the Palestinian process that would be a huge part of persuading opinion that the one issue where even quite moderate Muslims just feel frustration and anger - that we were dealing with it now.

…I know from the Israeli point of view how frustrating it is to be told, you know, this is an issue that in the interest of the world has got to be solved… and you worry in Israel that maybe our interests get sacrificed in the course of finding a solution. I hope that I’ve done enough to prove that I will never sacrifice the security of Israel in that way. But I do genuinely believe that our job has got to be to build that alliance of moderation and empower the moderate Muslims and Arab voices.

Hear, hear.

Reminding Britons of their historic responsibility for the plight of the Palestinians, the Palestinian prime minister, seemingly unaware of the West’s sour mood vis-a-vis recalcitrant Muslim leaders, goes over the head of Tony Blair, who is visiting the Middle East and has met with Abbas and with Olmert but won’t meet with any Hamas leaders, and appeals directly to a presumably more sympathetic audience: the “real” Labour party:

Here in Palestine we wonder what the British public thinks of the Blair government conduct that has brought about untold hurt to the Palestinian people. We know why our people are being collectively punished. It is because we refuse to give up our right to freedom and independence.

At the heart of our region’s problems is the Israeli occupation, which has brought about endless suffering and disasters. If you wish to do the right thing, Mr Blair, then work for the end of occupation without further delay. Our message to Labour party delegates as they assemble this month is not to allow those who stand with our oppressors to divert you from your values and historic association with freedom movements around the world.

It would seem, however, the Palestinians couldn’t be further from the minds of Labour Party politicians, who are in a full-out public war with one another. Here’s the BBC’s headline:

If Charles Clarke’s savage attacks on Gordon Brown were designed to flush him out and even expose him, then to some extent they have worked.

I know close to nothing about Labour Party politics, but here’s a handy primer from the BBC, which promises to be the “full story” of the Brownites vs. the Blairites. I’ve cut and pasted the highlights. (There’s not a word about foreign policy.):

It would wrong to use the labels Old Labour and New Labour but they do give a guide to the differences.

For example Mr Brown and his closest aides and supporters are at ease with trade unionists and can live with the left.

Sharp divide

Blairites can barely disguise their contempt for the unions and the many traditions of the labour movement.

So you are unlikely to find the Brownites calling for the party to cuts its link with the unions, a demand which has been made repeatedly by arch-Blairites.

…

Just as sharp is the divide over the use of spin doctors such as Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell.

Brownites have detested the reliance which Mr Blair has placed on the black arts of media manipulation.

They have hated the leaking and briefing against colleagues which Downing Street endorsed and which became so commonplace in recent years.

…

[Brown] has promised to restore the authority of the civil service in the hope that he can rebuild public trust in the Labour government.

Secret loans from a coterie of rich entrepreneurs are likely to be a thing of the past.

Mr Brown is thought likely to favour a new and more transparent way of funding party politics.

…

He has indicated he will seek to improve consultation with Labour’s constituency parties and deepen the sense of participation.

And now it seems that the pressure is on Brown.

Meanwhile, Blair is having a fine old time with Olmert and Abbas, who are ready to meet each other unconditionally—because they want what is best for their people. But of course Hamas stands firm: it wants only resistance.

And only a fool or a marked man would try to insert himself into the double-dealing back-stabbing blood-curdling rip-their-guts-out arena of British politics.

Oops! That’s fiction!

I wouldn’t want you to think that I can’t tell the difference between…

It’s hard to remember; it’s hard to forget.

I left my building at 9:05. Oddly, there were a lot of people on the sidewalk—way more than usual. It was strange. The first plane had hit, and I could see the thick cloud of black smoke billowing madly against the brilliant blue sky, although I couldn’t see the World Trade Center tower itself. We lived too far—a little over a mile away. A couple of my neighbors were standing outside our building. A plane had crashed into one of the towers, one of them said. He’d heard it on the radio just before leaving the house. We looked at each other. It was a rare perfect late- summer day in New York: crisp and sparkling. Indeed it would be one of the most magificent autumns, weather-wise, that I can recall in more than 30 years of living in New York City.

How could a plane crash into one of the towers, with this visibility?

We looked at each other, and did not ask that question out loud. But it passed between us before we went our separate ways.

I headed for the drugstore around the corner, where it took them fifteen minutes to fill my prescription. The pharmacist was listening to the radio. Yes, a plane had crashed into the tower; it was confirmed. I remember no details about the broadcast, only that it sank in that this was deliberate.

Still, it had happened before, and that attack on the World Trade Center turned out to be not that big a deal. At least that’s how I thought of it. When I did think of it. Which was never. And I’m someone who has alwas read up on politics and news—local and global. The politically informed and sophisticated people I knew never talked about it either. Ever. Not once.

When the attack happened, we said: “Oh shit.” And then we simply forgot about it.

We did not pay attention. The quest to become a player in the New Gilded Age had overtaken everyone. I wasn’t competing in that arena, but just a few days earlier we’d put the finishing touches on our renovated kitchen. Many times since then I’ve thought of how grateful I am to the fates that I worked up the courage to go through with that nightmare project in the 105-degree heat of August 2001, because I don’t think I’d have had it in me afterward. Not that I haven’t been nesting, along with the rest of America—that is a discernible trend: nesting, and sheltering, and all the goodies that go with them.

Anyway, I went back home with the prescription medicine and gave it to my daughter, who wasn’t feeling well. She should stay home, I told her. I was going to the office.

Many times since then I have wondered what got into me that I instructed her to stay home while I left for midtown. She was 16, and feeling under the weather. Her father had just reported for jury duty—downtown at the courthouse, not far away from the Twin Towers. I figured he’d be let out, and would be home soon. (All would be well at home: home was home. And our son, a senior in college, was upstate.) She should stay home and wait for her father. I had things to do at the office.

What things? What was I thinking?

What was I thinking when I left her at home, walked a few blocks to buy a magazine I’d been looking for, heard on the radio that the Pentagon had been hit, and still went downstairs into the subway station, rode uptown, walked into my office, only to learn that the first tower had collapsed.

I was not thinking.

I was in denial.

Denial is your ticket to the future, as a wise man once said.

To be continued…maybe.

Peace out.