Al-Qaida Barks, The Spanish Fly March 17, 2004 AFTER A terrorist attack by al-Qaida that left hundreds of their fellow countrymen dead, Spanish voters immediately voted to give the terrorists what they want -- a Socialist government that opposes America's war on terrorism. Al-Qaida has changed a government. Until the bombings last week, the center-right Popular Party of outgoing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar had been sailing to victory. But then the al-Qaida bombs went off and Spaniards turned out in droves to vote against the government that had been a staunch Bush ally in the war on terrorism. (I guess it's OK for a Spanish Socialist to "politicize" a terrorist attack just to get elected.) In a videotaped message, the al-Qaida "military commander" for Europe claimed credit for the bombings, saying that the terrorist attack was meant to punish Spain for supporting the war in Iraq. The message came as a total shock to liberals who have been furiously insisting that Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with al-Qaida. Apparently al-Qaida didn't think so. After the Madrid bombings, it looks like liberals and terrorists will have to powwow on whether there was an Iraq/al-Qaida link. Two hundred dead Spaniards say there was. The New York Times called the Spanish election "an exercise in healthy democracy." And an ATM withdrawal with a gun to your head is a "routine banking transaction." Instead of vowing to fight the people who killed their fellow citizens, the Spanish decided to vote with al-Qaida on the war. A murdering terrorist organization said, "Jump!" and an entire country answered, "How high?" One Spaniard who decided to switch his vote in reaction to the bombings told the Times: "Maybe the Socialists will get our troops out of Iraq and al-Qaida will forget about Spain so we will be less frightened." That's the fighting spirit! If the violent Basque separatist group only killed more people, Spain would surely give them what they want, too. After his stunning upset victory, Socialist Party leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero vowed to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq if the United States does not turn over Iraq to the United Nations. He also vowed that all of Spain's remaining trains will run on time. Zapatero said the war with Iraq had "only caused violence" and "there were no reasons for it." One reason for the war, which would seem to be a sufficient reason for a more manly country, is that the people who just slaughtered 200 Spaniards didn't like it. But, like the Democrats, the Spanish hate George Bush more than they hate the terrorists. Zapatero said the war in Iraq was based on "lies" and called on President Bush and Tony Blair to "do some reflection and self-criticism." So don't think of the Spanish election as a setback for freedom -- think of it as a preview of life under President John Kerry! What kind of lunatic would blame Bush for 200 Spaniards killed by al-Qaida bombs? Oh wait -- Howard Dean just did. Summarizing the views of Socialists everywhere, Dean said: "The president was the one who dragged our troops to Iraq, which apparently has been a factor in the death of 200 Spaniards over the weekend." Yes, with 1,700 dead or injured Spaniards, George Bush certainly has some explaining to do. What have the terrorists ever done besides kill and maim thousands of innocent civilians? Bush isn't fully funding "No Child Left Behind," for God's sake! Before he was put into office because he supported policies favored by al-Qaida terrorists, appeasement candidate Zapatero said: "I want Kerry to win." Kerry is also supported by North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, who broadcasts Kerry speeches over Radio Pyongyang with favorable commentary. So now Kerry really does have two foreign leaders on record supporting him: a Socialist terrorist-appeaser and a Marxist mass murderer who dresses like Bea Arthur. Zapatero predicted that his own victory would help the anti-war party "in the duel between Bush and Kerry." Would you mind repeating that, sir? I was distracted by that large white flag you're waving. However Spain's election affects Americans, we can be sure that Spain's surrender to terrorism hasn't been lost on the terrorists. It's difficult to imagine the American people responding to a new terrorist attack by deciding to placate the terrorists, as the Spanish did. A mollusk wouldn't react that way to an attack. Only a liberal could be so perverse. No matter how many of our European allies may surrender to the terrorists, America will never be alone. This is a country founded in a covenant with God by people who had to flee Europe to do it. Sailing to the New World in 1630 on the ship Arabella, the Puritans' leader and governor, John Winthrop, said Americans were entering into a covenant with God to create a "city upon a hill." We would be judged by all the world if we ever broke that covenant. But if we walked with God, "We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when 10 of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies." He has intervened in our affairs before, such as in 1776, 1861 and 1980. With the Spanish election, we are witnessing a capitulation to savagery that makes full-scale war inevitable. The Democratic candidate wants to represent godless Europeans. The Republican candidate wants to represent Americans. As Winthrop said: "The eyes of all people are upon us." http://www.anncoulter.org/
The Calculus of a Bombing March 19, 2004 By Y. A. Espinoza Forgive me for sounding impolite, but after the bombings in Madrid, can we really say that the world is a safer place? The political fallout has been fast and furious, as well as the interpretations abounding over the attack. New Socialist prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has pledged that Spanish troops in Iraq will be coming home soon, and blasted George W. Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair for organizing the war "with lies." Whether Mr. Zapatero is speaking from conviction or political inexperience belies the problem of how to frame the Spanish election in the first place. If al-Qaeda or a group linked with it is indeed responsible, can we interpret the election results as Islamic fundamentalism dictating European policy, as Wilfried Martens, head of the European People's Party declared? This statement is one of those hasty constructions that does more harm than good. By Mr. Martens' reasoning, the election results would mean that millions of Spanish voters are tools of Islamist radicalism, and that the Socialists are cowards ready to call it quits. It also presupposes a level of sophisticated political divination that seems too improbable to attribute to al-Qaeda or its sycophant supporters: by carrying out a terrorist attack, the plotters gambled that it would bring down a government and humble a European state into appeasement. For terrorists, timing may be everything, but being able to steer the outcome of a vote? Possible, but highly improbable. A more viable interpretation of Spanish electoral anger might be that the people wished to find another government more capable of protecting them, and most importantly, listening to them when 90% of the population is against the government's foreign policy. If Islamist radicals are indeed behind the bombing, they might cluck with the satisfaction that they brought about political change in Spain, but then they would be conflating the struggle against terrorism with the invasion of Iraq - a feat formerly accomplished by the American and British governments. And such a belief among these radical killers is nothing but false comfort, because I have yet to hear anyone in Spain as saying they're ready to sue for peace with people who blow up trains or fly jets into buildings. For American voters, there is another question that must be faced: wasn't the invasion of Iraq supposed to make the world a safer place? Since the fall of Baghdad, there have been any number of bombings in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iraq itself and now Spain. The Administration kept a steady cadence of conflating terrorism and Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the invasion, and further cemented that concept by declaring that America had taken the struggle against terrorism to its center, Baghdad. Cooler and better informed heads knew this to be patently untrue: whatever Saddam Hussein's sympathies for suicide bombers or financial support to the families of, Iraq was hardly a terrorist haven. Yet now with al-Qaeda still able to operate with impunity - and this is apparently proved in the case of the Madrid bombings - how can the White House still insist that the invasion of Iraq was connected to terrorism - or that we're winning the battle against terrorists? As of this writing, no one in the media has bothered to connect these dots, or even blithely bring up the question for the body politic. It bears repeating: the government insisted that we would all be safer once Saddam Hussein was out of power, and yet two hundred more civilians later, that claim is specious if not fantastical. We are decidedly not any safer from radical Islamist butchers. While no thinking person would rush to the defense of an odious wretch like Saddam Hussein, continued terrorist attacks in the world arguably demonstrate that al-Qaeda isn't as harmed by the dictator's deposition as was previously believed. And in an ironic twist, the invasion of Iraq might now be added to the list of the terrorists' irrational grievances. Prior to the war, Iraq had no connection to September 11 or international terrorism. The Bush Administration confused the two and has now created a problem which earlier did not exist. Namely, a seductive but false calculus is now running rampant, which is why the aforementioned Mr. Martens can think the Islamists scored an electoral victory in Spain. They have done nothing of the sort, but unless there are enough voices to combat this illogical assessment, more and more American voters will perceive it as inherent European weakness, and that we need the strong leadership of the Bush Administration to keep up the fight. Politically, that translates into a second term for Mr. Bush, whose foreign policy has pushed a phony issue, Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, over a real, potent one: terrorism. The results couldn't be deadlier.
Quoting Ann Coulter just spent the last shred of credibility that you had Maverick. THere are intelligent conservative critics of Kerry and the Democrats, you don't need to resort to a pop bimbo.
Sorry slammajamma. I normally would not post articles from Ann although I think she is right on 90% of the time, but since the ART's of ET continue to post crap from socialist Molly Ivens and that communist Paul Krugman, I decided, what the hell, if they can do it, I can do it. And don't tell me about credibility slamma, if you and Ann went toe to toe, she would eat your lunch. Don't hate her because she is so effective of communicating her talking points.
RS, The problem in your article's reasoning is that the Spanish incumbents were headed for a comfortable victory prior to the bombing. So the Spanish voters apparently were not that upset with having troops in Iraq and joining the US in fighting terrorism. All that apparently changed when the bombs went off.
Those who exploded the bombs were responsible for the explosion. Those who voted are responsible for the results of the election. I don't hold GW directly responsible directly for what happened, any more than we hold parents directly responsible for the actions of their grown children. However, we can conclude that the way children turn out often is a result of parental influence. This is not an excuse, but a fact of the parent and child relationship. I agree 100% that we are either for or against the terrorists. I am against them. Does this mean that I have to agree with everything Bush does to fight the war on terrorism? Can I be against terrorism, and against the way Bush processes the war? Is it really treasonous to have a differnet opinion on what is the best solution to a problem we face? If I think Bush should have finished the job in Afghanistan, and not engaged in a pre-emptive war until Bin Laden was found and Al Queda completely crushed, and if he had done that, maybe 200 spaniards would be alive today, and maybe the election would have turned out differently.....am I not possibly right in my thinking? It is natural for most human beings to second guess their decisions. Very few people who actually grow and mature cannot look back with the benefit of hindsight and honestly say they would have made the same decisions now that they made back then based on new information, wisdom, and experiences in life. I find Bush's unwillingness to admit that he may have blundered horribly in his abandonment of Bin Laden and turned the attention to Saddam quite revealing. What is done is done, but we have a decision to make about the 4 years after Bush's term is up. I for one want to believe he will not make the same mistakes over again, and if he never admits to having made a mistake in Iraq, why would I think he won't do it again somewhere else? p.s. Bush makes all these pronouncements how we will never give up on the fight to end terrorism, etc. Go back and read some of the speeches by Johnson about how we would never lose in Vietnam, and how we would never retreat or surrender victory. Bush has no control once he is out of office. He should speak from a platform that he can control, not necessarily speak for all Americans now and in the future.
AAA, I don't disagree with you. My ONLY purpose of making the post was that it was an example of how virtually any issue can be made to be reasonably (if not completely convincingly) presented from different perspectives. I am not current on Spanish politics. I do not have a sense of how the electorate in Spain thinks, or how susceptible they are to a terror threat. Or if they can be so easily "blackmailed" into electing who they wouldn't have otherwise. But one line in the article I posted struck a chord of logic. And that was (to paraphrase) that the Spanish are in no way looking to sue for peace with Al Qaeda. Nor is dissent expressed in the voting booth a blow to democracy in any irreparable sense. If the bombing changed the election, then that definitely is something to think about long and hard for us. Does this mean that I believe WE (America, Bush, the UK, Blair, et al) should be held accountable in any way? Absolutely not. Because if he Spanish electorate was freaked out enough to change their vote, then chalk up a single battle for the monsters. But I am confident (and prayerful) that we will win the war. Every real war has battles that have casualties for the good guys (in this case, the Spanish commuters, just as the good people who perished on 9/11 (and at Pearl Harbor, etc.). My feelings on HOW to win the war and your feelings may differ dramatically. But our goal is the same. To win. At any cost necessary. I don't want EVER to have to go through a screening to get on a commuter train or subway. I don't like it at the airports. I want to feel safe. I want my family to BE safe. You and I and every American wants exactly the same outcome. How we achieve the outcome doesn't matter. We have just begun to learn how to fight this war. But the learning curve is steep. (But so was the case with the manhattan Project). I hope we can become proficient as quickly as possible. This is a war that we MUST win. There will be no armistice. No surrender. Not even a cease fire. I am going to Vietnam in late April. 33 years ago, I was offered free airfare, and room and board. I respectfully declined the trip (didn't want to sit through the timeshare sales pitch) I could not go there at all for a quarter century. But peace followed war in Vietnam. Peace will never follow war with this enemy. Hell, I can't go to Syria right now. Why? Because of the same kind of insanity we are dealing with in the war on terror. I wish I had answers. We all do. Maybe we should drive the Taliban (and perhaps all of Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the rest) crazy with giant loudspeakers on their borders blasting rap music. Or John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance" 24/7. Whatever works. The thing is we need to figure out WHAT WILL WORK. Clearly we have a lot of planning yet to do. Which brings me back to what I said here on ET over a year ago....we needed to depose Saddam. I only thought we had better options on how to accomplish the objective. So you and I; Pabst, Maverick, ART, Waggie, CDBurn, Bung, and probably even Harry Trader all have the same interests at heart. We only disagree (and not by a lot) on how we can best accomplish our ends. Not a single ET contributor (I hope) does not feel the same. What you and I DO seem to disagree on to a degree, (perhaps "look at differently is a better term) is that I don't see your perspective as "evil" or un-American AT ALL! While some hard line hawks (not you specifically...you are too intelligent and rational IMO, but Mondo Trader for one example) believes those who protested our invasion last year were guilty of sedition (or was it treason? I forgot...I just remember the extreme white/black irrationality). Peace, RS
ART: You're making an assumption that Bin Laden is alive. I believe he's dead. I believe the admin knows he's dead. I believe that "selling" further preemptive military action in the region would be next to impossible with the Bin Laden cat out of the bag. Not saying I agree with the possible deception. It is however my opinion of events. P.S. In the next three weeks the world will learn of OBL's 12/01 demise.