Bombing of Libya - 25 April 1986

It’s tempting, but I believe too soon to attempt what the bankers call a trial balance on the American bombing of Tripoli.

That's to say, a double-entry review of what has to be taken into account, for the moment, though one or two facts and attitudes, have come to light which I ought to mention before we move on as all of us must, to living our lives. First, some of you may recall my saying that a decisive factor, in calling on Britain to release the F1-11’s based there, was the assurance of the men in the Pentagon that the F1-11 is the best, the most dependable, fighter bomber we have for precision night bombing.

Well, I hope somebody in the Pentagon or the White House is making an unflinching review of their performance. Five of them apparently failed to function, and the ones that worked didn’t set up much of a record for precision bombing of military targets, if they hit a schoolhouse, Allied embassy grounds and several civilian suburbs.

If it was assumed, in the briefing that Colonel Gadaffi’s tent and living quarters were terrorist headquarters, then somebody ought to have guessed that women and children would have been almost certain victims. It’s something that military planners, must, these days, think twice about. One, from simple human considerations, but secondly – and it's why I said, these days – because television crews are going to be on hand, and the victim is going to see to it that they get gruesomely selective pictures.

So, of course, the first human result shown here, as well as everywhere else, wherever, the colonel's wounded children, and other civilians. Which presented the radical young, in many countries, with the golden opportunity of maintaining through marches, and chantings and posters, that President Reagan is in the child-butchering business.

Another item causing question the White House’s irrefutable or refutable evidence that the Berlin disco bombing was Libya’s doing. It was the arrest last Monday of a Jordanian charged with that crime, and the identifying of him as the brother of the man who was picked up in London on suspicion of trying to blow up that Israeli airliner. At the last report, both brothers were being linked not with Libya but with a pro-Syrian party in Jordan.

So, we have to note down for the record, when it comes to be written that the main provocation given for the attack on Tripoli – Libya’s involvement in the Berlin bombing – might now be refuted. And a question should be jotted down, in view of the performance of the F1-11s – why couldn’t the fighter bombers aboard the two American aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean have done the job?

On the other hand, the other side of the ledger, we have to recognise that the American action, if it stirred innumerable anti-American marches and riots, as practically any American military action anywhere, is bound to do today, it did put on the spot the western governments that have sat around for so long, deploring international terrorism, and getting out such innocuous resolutions as the one the European Community foreign ministers, passed on the very eve of the Tripoli attack, which expressed the customary brave concern, and ended with the brave sentence that states clearly implicated in supporting terrorism should be induced to renounce such support and respect the rules of international law.

How induce, wherefore respect? Well, after the attacks several European nations at least felt obliged to publicise new restrictions on Libyan nationals: the closing of embassies, the expulsion of suspected Libyans and so forth. And France directly warned Libya that it would use military force to respond to any attack the colonel might think of mounting against Tunisia.

The final item to enter into the ledger before we put it back on the shelf is the news, which seems to be thoroughly authenticated, that when the French were consulted by the Americans before the attack took place, their government was ready to support, whether in the spirit or in uniform is not clear, anyway, to support a larger American attack, one aimed – one official put it – at effecting a major change in Libya, which could only mean the overthrow of Gadaffi.

But they would not go along with the fringe attack on Tripoli or, as one Frenchman put it, a pinprick, that should intimate to the countries which sponsor terrorism that the United States is not the only country whose patience is frayed and who was prepared to take more drastic action, than the signing of a resolution to induce such people to cease and assist, and please, to be good boys and respect the rules of international law.

Last Sunday, I expect, I hope, many of you were able to tune in and make the acquaintance of an old gentleman who lives round my corner, and tends, like me, to totter off to the same shop and the same bakery, to procure the delicious goodies, which all the best dieticians forbid to the aged.

He is the towering, if tottering, artist whose name for 60 years we have approximately pronounced as Vladimir Horowitz. I notice that, his Russian hosts called him by the same name of course, but in a manner almost unrecognisable to us, uncouth, non-Slavs. It reminded me of a night in Madrid long ago, when I was taking with a Spanish film director who told us that the Spaniards' favourite American film actor was Horace Estiad. I took his word for it, till, when he talked with enthusiasm about the Lindberg film and Hitchcock’s Rear window, I recognised his hero as none other than James Stewart.

Well, Horowitz then. Hororwitz is 81, born in or near Kiev, nobody is quite certain, what is certain is that after the revolution he saw his father arrested and taken to a prison camp where he died. That Horowitz, already a star pianist at 21, left his homeland in 1925, toured far and wide and acquired the reputation as long ago as the 1930s or '40s, of being one of the two or three greatest living pianists.

In 1942, he became an American citizen and swore, as he did as late as last year, that he would never return to Russia. What changed his mind was the pleading of President Reagan that he should be the one to initiate the new cultural exchange programme which the president signed with Mr Gorbachev last November.

Mr Horowitz finally gave in, on his own rather imperious terms. He will not and would not, play any other piano than his own, it would have to be dismembered in New York and assembled in Moscow. We had an engaging and funny little feature on the network news about this procedure. What was needed, said the commentator, was three or four burly Americans, to be told to be careful. And then at the other end, three or four burly Russians, who would be told to be careful.

It couldn’t have been better if it had been done by professional actors. The actual dynamics of trying to get the thing out whole and then taking off the legs and manoeuvring it into the lift, was worthy of Laurel and Hardy and the moving men, I must say, seemed completely unaware of the camera... "Hey Bert, easy Bert." Watch it please, the Moscow end looked like the American original who had been flown over to complete the act.

The care and comfort of the piano were only a preliminary condition, of Mr Horowitz’s surrender to Anglo-Russian friendship. A private jet, a television crew of 43 members, his wife and secretary and chef and others of his personal entourage 30 adventure film cassettes you might want to see in the restful hours between his recitals in Moscow and Leningrad. An agreement that he would have flown in from France, his favourite vegetable, artichokes. And, from London or Paris, his favourite fish, sole de Manche, which is his funny way of pronouncing Dover sole.

Last weekend, the Russians must have had many misgivings about the fringe benefits, or fringe nuisances, of the cultural exchange programme. I hope somebody told them that there are artists of the top calibre, who would be content to fly public and settle for wurst and vodka. But nobody at this end doubted these personal stipulations were worth it. Of course, many of the best artists from both countries have been coming and going for years, but always at the instigation of private sponsors.

What the president’s decision to start an official government-blessed exchange has done, or should do, is to extend, the availability of the best talent in both countries, but also to make the performers themselves feel that they are immune from suspicion as enemy agents, or individualists defying their governments. May seem a small point, but it’s an important one.

The fact is that many, perhaps most, first-rate artists or second-rate or fifth-rate are non-political. It has always been so, and there is no crime in being non-political, until I suppose you refuse to serve your country in any way during a war. A curious blighting shadow was thrown over the otherwise joyous event of Horowitz’s Moscow appearance by the fact that his visit was not advertised, that in the local, I presume, national also, newspaper entertainment columns there was an actual blank beneath the name of the conservatory in which he played.

Fourteen hundred officials and their wives had seats and 400 only were left for the public. There seemed to be a strenuous official campaign to pretend Horowitz wasn’t there. But, a couple of thousand people mobbed his car when it first drove up to the theatre. Somehow, the people had heard. One Sunday afternoon in Moscow, for a short time, the people triumphed over the politicians.

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