Decision Points

Rather than throw a formal reception, the Blairs arranged a cozy family dinner with their four children—including little Leo, age fourteen months.
    About halfway through the meal, the death penalty came up. Cherie made clear she didn’t agree with my position. Tony looked a little uncomfortable. I listened to her views and then defended mine. I told her I believed the death penalty, when properly administered, could save lives by deterring crime. A talented lawyer whom I grew to respect, Cherie rebutted my arguments. At one point, Laura and I overheard Euan, the Blairs’ bright seventeen-year-old son, say, “Give the man a break, Mother.”
    The more time we spent together, the more I respected Tony. Over the years, he grew into my closest partner and best friend on the world stage. He came to the United States for meetings more than thirty times during my presidency. Laura and I visited him in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and London. In November 2003, Tony and Cherie invited us to their home in Trimdon Colliery, an old mining area in the countryside. They served us a cup of tea in their redbrick Victorian and took us to a town pub, the Dun Cow Inn. We ate fish and chips with mushy peas, which I washed down with a nonalcoholic Bitburger lager. After lunch, we dropped by a local school and watched a soccer practice—known as football to our hosts. The people were decent and welcoming, aside from the protester who carried a sign that read “Mad Cowboy Disease.”
    Tony had a quick laugh and a sharp wit. After our first meeting, a British reporter asked what we had in common. I quipped, “We both use Colgate toothpaste.” Tony fired back, “They’re going to wonder how you know that, George.” When he addressed a Joint Session of Congress in 2003, Tony brought up the War of 1812, when British troops burned the White House. “I know this is kind of late,” he said, “but … sorry.”
    Unlike many politicians, Tony was a strategic thinker who could see beyond the immediate horizon. As I would come to learn, he and I were kindred spirits in our faith in the transformative power of liberty. In thefinal week of my presidency, I was proud to make him one of the few foreign leaders to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. **
    Above all, Tony Blair had courage. No issue demonstrated it more clearly than Iraq. Like me, Tony considered Saddam a threat the world could not tolerate after 9/11. The British were targets of the extremists. They had extensive intelligence on Saddam. And they understood in a personal way the menace he posed. Saddam was shooting at their pilots, too.
    If we had to remove Saddam from power, Tony and I would have an obligation to help the Iraqi people replace Saddam’s tyranny with a democracy. The transformation would have an impact beyond Iraq’s borders. The Middle East was the center of a global ideological struggle. On one side were decent people who wanted to live in dignity and peace. On the other were extremists who sought to impose their radical views through violence and intimidation. They exploited conditions of hopelessness and repression to recruit and spread their ideology. The best way to protect our countries in the long run was to counter their dark vision with a more compelling alternative.
    That alternative was freedom. People who could choose their leaders at the ballot box would be less likely to turn to violence. Young people growing up with hope in the future would not search for meaning in the ideology of terror. Once liberty took root in one society, it could spread to others.
    In April 2002, Tony and Cherie visited Laura and me in Crawford. Tony and I talked about coercive diplomacy as a way to address the threat from Iraq. Tony suggested that we seek a UN Security Council resolution that presented Saddam with a clear ultimatum: allow weapons inspectors back into Iraq, or face serious consequences. I didn’t have a lot of faith in the UN. The Security Council had passed sixteen resolutions against Saddam to no avail. But I agreed to consider his idea.

    I raised Iraq with other world leaders throughout 2002. Many shared my assessment of the threat, including John Howard of Australia, José Maria Aznar of Spain, Junichiro Koizumi of Japan, Jan Peter Balkenende of the Netherlands, Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark, Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland, and most other leaders in Central and Eastern Europe. It was revealing that some of the strongest advocates for