The Rain in Spain
The view of a lot of American pundits on Spain is, in a word, wrong. In two words, it's fucked up. Andrew Sullivan blogs:It's a spectacular result for Islamist terrorism, and a chilling portent of Europe's future. A close election campaign, with Aznar's party slightly ahead, ended with the Popular Party's defeat and the socialist opposition winning. It might be argued that the Aznar government's dogged refusal to admit the obvious quickly enough led people to blame it for a cover-up. But why did they seek to delay assigning the blame on al Qaeda? Because they knew that if al Qaeda were seen to be responsible, the Spanish public would blame Aznar not bin Laden!Let me get the libertarian isolationist rant out of the way first. It seems quite arrogant to tell the Spanish people who to blame for an event that took place in Madrid. Don't we spend a great deal of time complaining about the French telling us to vote for John Kerry? Aren't there people out there who are going to justify a Bush vote by saying, "I'm not going to let the editor of Le Monde tell me how to vote!"
Of course there are. But that was just the obligatory libertarian isolationist rant. There is a deeper logical disconnect in condemning the socialists victory as a victory for the terrorists. This is something that even some Spanish politicians are blind to. The Washington Post quotes Gustavo de Arustegui, a Popular Party MP: "[the terrorists] have achieved all their objectives." De Arustegui, Sullivan, and the Establish shed Wisdom see the rise of the socialist Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and his party as a weakening in policy; they see Zapatero's promise to remove Spain's 1200 troops in Iraq as a victory for the terrorists.
No.
If Zapatero is planning on appeasing al Qaeda, someone needs to tell him that. The Post:
"My immediate priority will be to combat all kinds of terrorism," Zapatero said. "The terrorists must know that they will confront all of us together. We will win."
This is hardly Neville Chamberlain. What the Spaniards are calling for is, in Zapatero's words, "a government of change." They are opposed to fighting oil wars in Iraq, they are opposed to the way Bush is fighting the war on terror.
Maybe they're wrong. Maybe invading Iraq is the way to stop al Qaeda. But what happened in Spain was an election, a change in government that will result in different policy and different leaders. It is, in a word, democracy. Isn't the war on terror a war to protect freedom? Not just our own, but the democratic freedoms of the entire world. If that's so, I'm not going to call people exercising the freedoms we're fighting for a defeat.
