“If the attacks were carried out by the Basque group ETA, that is good for Aznar and the ruling Conservative party, because they have taken a hard line against ETA and because the opposition Socialists have called for compromise and negotiations. On the other hand, if the attacks were carried out (as it now appears, based on arrests and Al Qaeda claims of responsibility) by Al Qaeda, it is in retaliation for Aznar’s domestically unpopular support of the war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and Spanish voters will blame Aznar for bringing this on and punish him at the polls.”
I have seen variations of this analysis in practically every story about the Spanish situation. The Associated Press has been particularly egregious, failing to distinguish in some stories between those demonstrations in which many millions of Spaniards came out against terrorism, and anti-government demonstrations by a couple of thousand left-wingers blaming Aznar for the attacks.
The problem with the “conventional wisdom” is that it is itself completely dependent on the left-wing analysis of the situation, in which ETA and Al Qaeda have nothing in common. Aznar believes that “terrorism” is a common enemy, and that the fight against ETA and the fight against Al Qaeda are part of the same war. The Socialists are assuming that the Spanish electorate will analyze the situation as they do, which is why the opposition candidates have actually accused Aznar of lying about the evidence in order to make it look like it was ETA rather than Al Qaeda, an absurd charge given that the government arrested five Muslims within 2 days of the attacks, and given that its earlier public statements, while pointing out reasons it might have been ETA, carefully declined to rule out Arab/Muslim terrorism.
The contention that the attacks are Al Qaeda’s retaliation for Spain’s assistance in the Iraq war also shows the absurdity of the conventional media view. Remember how everyone said that the Iraq war was wrong because there was no link at all between Saddam and al Qaeda, Bush just made one up? But now we are supposed to believe that Al Qaeda retaliates for the toppling of Saddam, and yet accept that there is no further linkage with ETA, despite the existence of some evidence of a link.
In my opinion, the Spanish voters are going to view the attribution of the attacks to Al Qaeda as evidence that the Conservatives’ “common enemy” analysis is more correct than the Socialists’ “no link” analysis, and give the Conservatives a big victory.
If I am wrong, this is very bad for the U.S., because if the Spaniards give the Socialists a victory, terrorists will be encouraged to believe that attacks timed to influence an election can succeed in scaring the voters into appeasing them.
That's because absolutely no research or thought was done. When I was reading the coverage of supposedly ordinary Spaniards discussing why they would now vote against the administration and for the leftists, I was struck by how much the "reporting" resembled the continuous pronouncements about the implosion of some Bush policy or other.
That conventional wisdom reads more like journalists' wishful thinking. That doesn't mean it's wrong (though I expect it probably is), but no facts were considered in forming it.