Friday, March 19, 2004
Spanish surprise redux
In response to my post on the results of the Spanish elections, Steve wrote this comment. My response follows.
Disagree completely. The result is horrifying .. Al Qaeda throwing an election, using not just the West's technological infrastructre but its democratic instutitions against it, by playing on the populace's dissatisfaction with the policies of the outgoing PM. Got to hand it to them .. very smart. What's harder to understand is the Spanish electorate's response, which is plainly something more than a typical anti-U.S. reflex, but has really bad wider consequences in that it rewards terrorist acts by handing the perpetrators exactly what they want. And this is true whether you were a supporter or an opponent of the Iraq war. What's next: Here, take Andalucia back, we were only just keeping it clean and prosperous for you?? Horrifying.
Steve, perhaps the result of the spanish election is a boost for Al-Qaeda. But let me ask you -- one of Bin Laden's demands was that the U.S. remove its troops from the holy land. Post 9-11, the U.S. troops were pulled out (by the Bush administration), thereby giving into one of Bin Laden's key demands. Why is it that American conservatives do not see that move as *giving in* to terrorists while the Spanish election is seen as one?
Digress a bit -- how and why did Al-Qaeda get this big in Iraq? Under Saddam Hussein, the only group with a seeming Al-Qaeda link in Iraq was the Ansar al-Islam. However, they did not operate in Saddam-controlled Iraq, but in Coalition protected Kurdish areas. In effect, the Iraq war has literally invited Al-Qaeda operations into the rest of the country, not to mention give them yet another excuse to recruit their own coalition of the willing (to die, ie). This incredible can of worms was precisely what several experienced Iraq hands warned Team Bush against opening.
Now coming to Spain, why don't America and its allies give a damn about *popular will* -- that bedrock of democracy everyone in the west seems to love paying lip service to? Spain is a very pacifist country, given their experience with the excesses of Franco's rule. A good 90% of the population totally opposed Spain's involvement in the Iraq war. Aznar did not seem to give a damn about the will of his people when he subscribed to the misadventure. What's worse, its being established now that the whole ETA angle the administration was tom-tomming was clearly a ploy to distract voter attention. Unfortunately, the voter wasn't deceived and they threw Aznar out.
In the mind of the vast majority of Spanish voters, the Madrid bombings were a price they paid for their govt's involvement in a war that most of them did not support. I, for one, cannot for a minute fault the Spanish people's disgust as expressed in the polls. I cannot fault the Polish prime-minister's remark yesterday that Poland was tricked into the war on spurious WMD claims. One of the beautiful things about democracy is that the govt is accountable to the people and if they make decisions sharply opposed to popular opinion and then the people pay a price, they are liable to be punished when the voter next gets a chance. It also underscores the weakness of the line -- "coalition of the willing." The "willing" were the ones in govt, not the ones who put them in office in the first place. Piss the people off, be prepared to pay a price.
This is also a good time for U.S. policy makers to reflect on the fact that the only place on earth where the Iraq war (in the form it eventually took) had popular support was in the United States itself (compare with the Afganistan campaign). So perhaps the next time the U.S. undertakes an adventure of this sort, it might be useful to listen to world opinion (and even the opinion of American diplmats who have experience in the middle east) and not just domestic opinion.
Disagree completely. The result is horrifying .. Al Qaeda throwing an election, using not just the West's technological infrastructre but its democratic instutitions against it, by playing on the populace's dissatisfaction with the policies of the outgoing PM. Got to hand it to them .. very smart. What's harder to understand is the Spanish electorate's response, which is plainly something more than a typical anti-U.S. reflex, but has really bad wider consequences in that it rewards terrorist acts by handing the perpetrators exactly what they want. And this is true whether you were a supporter or an opponent of the Iraq war. What's next: Here, take Andalucia back, we were only just keeping it clean and prosperous for you?? Horrifying.
Steve, perhaps the result of the spanish election is a boost for Al-Qaeda. But let me ask you -- one of Bin Laden's demands was that the U.S. remove its troops from the holy land. Post 9-11, the U.S. troops were pulled out (by the Bush administration), thereby giving into one of Bin Laden's key demands. Why is it that American conservatives do not see that move as *giving in* to terrorists while the Spanish election is seen as one?
Digress a bit -- how and why did Al-Qaeda get this big in Iraq? Under Saddam Hussein, the only group with a seeming Al-Qaeda link in Iraq was the Ansar al-Islam. However, they did not operate in Saddam-controlled Iraq, but in Coalition protected Kurdish areas. In effect, the Iraq war has literally invited Al-Qaeda operations into the rest of the country, not to mention give them yet another excuse to recruit their own coalition of the willing (to die, ie). This incredible can of worms was precisely what several experienced Iraq hands warned Team Bush against opening.
Now coming to Spain, why don't America and its allies give a damn about *popular will* -- that bedrock of democracy everyone in the west seems to love paying lip service to? Spain is a very pacifist country, given their experience with the excesses of Franco's rule. A good 90% of the population totally opposed Spain's involvement in the Iraq war. Aznar did not seem to give a damn about the will of his people when he subscribed to the misadventure. What's worse, its being established now that the whole ETA angle the administration was tom-tomming was clearly a ploy to distract voter attention. Unfortunately, the voter wasn't deceived and they threw Aznar out.
In the mind of the vast majority of Spanish voters, the Madrid bombings were a price they paid for their govt's involvement in a war that most of them did not support. I, for one, cannot for a minute fault the Spanish people's disgust as expressed in the polls. I cannot fault the Polish prime-minister's remark yesterday that Poland was tricked into the war on spurious WMD claims. One of the beautiful things about democracy is that the govt is accountable to the people and if they make decisions sharply opposed to popular opinion and then the people pay a price, they are liable to be punished when the voter next gets a chance. It also underscores the weakness of the line -- "coalition of the willing." The "willing" were the ones in govt, not the ones who put them in office in the first place. Piss the people off, be prepared to pay a price.
This is also a good time for U.S. policy makers to reflect on the fact that the only place on earth where the Iraq war (in the form it eventually took) had popular support was in the United States itself (compare with the Afganistan campaign). So perhaps the next time the U.S. undertakes an adventure of this sort, it might be useful to listen to world opinion (and even the opinion of American diplmats who have experience in the middle east) and not just domestic opinion.
