It had been announced that the troops were leaving Heathrow; the withdrawal seemed to be complete by the time I arrived on Tuesday evening. There wasn't a machine-gun to be seen all the way from the train platform to the departure gate. My initial response was disappointment. There's something boyishly thrilling about the idea of tanks at airports - or rather, there is if you live somewhere like England, from where such things as coups and invasions seem so very remote. The sense of unreality is only exacerbated by ignorance of the threat. Who were the Army there to defend against what? And what was it that changed to make their presence there all of a sudden unnecessary?

LRB 6 March 2003 | PDF Download