It was a crisp autumnal Sunday lunchtime here, the sunlight so clear that you could actually see the F-16s turning their tight concentric circles overhead, rather than just hear their constant rumblings. Then came the news that Americans had been awaiting. "Great," said David Goddard, 34, a truck mechanic in Saco, Maine. "I wish it had happened last week. I'm very happy it's happening now." So the nation duly sat back munching its Sunday-afternoon nachos to watch the much-anticipated fireworks display, beamed in live from 7,000 miles away. And then Prime Minister Bush and President Blair - or have I got that the wrong way round? - addressed the world.
From the moment the first $1.3bn, futuristic-looking B-2 stealth bomber took off from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri bound for Afghanistan, the Bush administration had taken its irrevocable first step in what will increasingly prove to be two simultaneous high wire acts: to keep the American public convinced that a punitive war against Osama Bin Laden is being waged successfully (the job of the Defence Secretary and chief hawk, Donald Rumsfeld), while keeping together a loose international coalition of political support (the hapless task of the much more cautious Secretary of State, Colin Powell). Initial victory went to the hawks, with Powell suddenly dipping below the horizon.
And Blair? From the perspective here, where war cabinets really do meet to make life-and-death decisions in places such as the White House and Pentagon, it is truly bizarre to see Tony Blair dragging Britain into its nationalistic war psychosis. "Tony Blair today established a formal war cabinet to oversee the conduct of the campaign," I found myself reading with disbelief in the London Evening Standard. How many Britons, now rightly worried that the UK could be subject to reprisals, know that, of the 60 aircraft sent into bombing raids that Sunday and Monday, not a single one was British? That the sole British contribution was to launch American missiles, so aged that they are no longer known by their now politically incorrect name of Tomahawks, from one or two submarines?
I ask this not to scorn the brave British troops already risking their lives; but it is strangely chilling to see a British prime minister relishing the reckless war rhetoric of a man on whose shoulders ultimate decisions and responsibilities do not rest. The facts, as ascertained by the FBI, are that the centres of planning for the 11 September attacks were in three countries: the United Arab Emirates, Germany and the US itself. Not Britain. But because Blair is a much better speaker than Bush, he has pulled off a smoke-and-mirrors act whereby it appears, to the gullible, that his doubtless sincere horror over the 11 September atrocities has actually led to wide British involvement in Operation Enduring Freedom. In fact, as usual, the buck stops here.
The start of the bombings certainly gave America a sense of catharsis it desperately needed. But with relief that the US military campaign had started came increased fear of what could happen next, with the now clearly inadequate attorney general, John Ashcroft, saying there was "a 100 per cent chance of [terrorist] reprisals". Even before 11 September, Americans tended to be hypochondriacal about being attacked abroad by terrorists; but now, with cases of anthrax confirmed in Florida, anxiety levels have increased to an astonishing degree. And, naturally, this fear of being attacked here, there and everywhere is (like any other form of hypochondria) probably worse than the real thing would be. Doctors' surgeries are packed to overflowing with patients who have symptoms, real and imagined; there has been a huge run on Cipro, the antibiotic with the best chance of beating anthrax if the disease is caught early enough; every single window in the Capitol and the Supreme Court is being coated with a special anti-bomb film; Sally Quinn, the wife of Ben Bradlee (the former Washington Post editor made famous by Watergate), tells of how she is acquiring gas masks and has stockpiled bottled water, torches with batteries and tins of food, keeps her car constantly full of petrol and ready to flee Washington, and so on.
That is the dilemma the administration is now facing. While the nation's panic levels remain high and continue to be stoked by the likes of Ashcroft, so people must gradually become inured to the notion that there will be no such dramatic military victory as there was in the Gulf war and Panama. "The cold war, it took 50 years, plus or minus," Rumsfeld said on his trip to Cairo. "It did not involve major battles. It involved continuous pressure. It involved co-operation by a host of nations. And when it ended, it ended not with a bang but through internal collapse. It strikes me that might be a more appropriate way to think about what we are up against here, than would be any major conflict." Half a century? Rumsfeld was desperately trying to lower American expectations while continuing to assuage the country's thirst for vengeance.
In a nutshell, that tentativeness is the actual current administration position here. The government knows it has an enemy, but is still not quite sure how and where to get at it. There is confusion about exactly how the military plan will unfold; the chiefs of staff, always enmeshed in internecine political warfare, still do not have a complete battle plan worked out. The political hawks (noticeably the deputy secretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz) want to broaden targets to include all-out war on Iraq.
But Powell, mindful of the possible consequences if Pakistan - say - erupts, is fighting an uphill battle to lower the military hawkishness. It would be an exaggeration to say that it is all a shambles, but Operation Enduring Freedom is much less cohesive and planned than the media spin has it. "We are determined not to be terrorised," said Rumsfeld, rather at a loss for more stirring words, when he returned to Washington.
Indeed, that just about sums up the one notion on which the Bush administration is currently united. But it must embrace inbuilt contradictions, by no means all of them of its own making: it must lower panic while maintaining public vigilance, and it must lower public expectations of war while keeping anger levels politically and socially tolerable. In other words, it more than has its work cut out; it all requires a juggling act desperately crying out for inspiring political leadership, and so far only Rumsfeld and Powell (hardly allies in outlook) have shown themselves to be capable of climbing on to a podium and conveying confidence in a genuine crisis such as this.
Those sotto voce whispers and finger-pointings of blame, meanwhile, keep rumbling away as inexorably as the F-16s. Following my quoting a Bush friend last week who firmly blamed the CIA for not foreseeing 11 September, there has been more open criticism: "You have to have spies on the ground to get his [Bin Laden's] location in real time, to know where he'll sleep that night," says the distinguished former Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton. "You have to penetrate their language, their culture." For a man of Hamilton's experience and knowledge to talk about planting agents among the Taliban shows the level of make-believe innocence with which so many Americans still approach the situation. Even the British army's few attempts to infiltrate Irish paramilitary groups, after all, invariably led to disaster.
There is still, however, that level of innocence in America's approach to terrorism and to the rest of the world. I was upbraided by a reader a couple of weeks ago for saying that America has "lost its innocence": I plead guilty to using an overworked cliche, but not for the sense I was trying to convey. Pearl Harbor was 5,000 miles away from New York and Washington, and the attack on it in 1941 is not an adequate comparison with 11 September. Not since the British in 1812 had the American mainland been breached and attacked as it was on 11 September. "We have lost our sense of complacency," is how another retired and respected politician, the former senator Sam Nunn, puts it. The loss of complacency, innocence: I'll settle for either, but it is a palpable passage in the lifetime of a young nation.
Living in the heart of Washington, you see this in unexpected ways. The other day, I was stopped at a roundabout near the Irish embassy for what I quickly realised was going to be Vice-President Dick Cheney's motorcade: we waited several minutes, during which ten or so police motorcyclists sped past, followed by police cars. Then came the two limousines - one of them containing Cheney - sandwiched between Secret Service vans, one of them with its back hatch open and gun barrels peeping out. If I had moved my car at any time, I have no doubt that one of the cops at the roundabout would have shot me straight away.
But two cyclists came up just as Cheney's car approached; there was just time to cross the road, and the policeman waved them through.
I cringed. Had the policeman not heard of the suicide cyclists in the Middle East? All one of these people would have needed to do would be to cycle furiously into the Cheney limousine, and the United States would no longer have had its vice-president. The cyclists were clearly commuters trying to get to work, but with stringent security, you make no exceptions, take no chances.
It was a little incident that was both charming and alarming. And yes, innocent, too.
