Posted on 03/17/2004 1:42:37 AM PST by jocon307
MADRID, March 16 — In the aftermath of its national election, Spain, along with the rest of the world, is struggling to answer a harrowing question: who really won on Sunday, the Socialists or the terrorists?
For the departing foreign minister, Ana Palacio, whose center-right government staunchly supported the American-led war in Iraq and lost the election, the answer is clear. "We are giving birth to a new world, and it is sad and dangerous and sick," Mrs. Palacio said in an interview. "We are giving a signal to terrorists that they can have their way because we have given in."
For José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Socialist who will soon become the next prime minister, the answer is far different. Asked at a news conference on Monday whether terrorist bombs had catapulted him to power, Mr. Zapatero said nothing could be further from the truth.
"Spaniards have always expressed great maturity and common sense at the time of voting," he said, emphasizing each word. "There was a desire for change because there was a government that had done bad things. And on Sunday, the people voted for change."
The reverberations from the ballot box here have been felt around the world. Spain, with Britain, had embraced the American war effort in Iraq, despite widespread popular opposition. The Madrid bombings raised the possibility that Europe was a fresh target for violence and that terrorists could undermine democracy and manipulate elections.
In Washington, President Bush tried to dispel the notion that the Spanish election would lead other European nations to seek distance from Washington's approach to terrorism and Iraq. During a meeting with the Dutch prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, Mr. Bush asked the Dutch people — and by extension other Europeans — to think hard before they followed any impulse to pull their troops out of Iraq.
"I would ask them to think about the Iraqi citizens, who don't want people to withdraw, because they want to be free," Mr. Bush said. "And I would remind the Dutch citizens that Al Qaeda has an interest in Iraq for a reason." He added, "They realize this is a front in the war on terror, and they fear the spread of freedom and democracy in places like the greater Middle East."
The contest in Spain had always been close between the governing Popular Party, which backed Mr. Bush's policies, and the Socialists, who opposed them. Other issues at stake before the bombings were unemployment, a housing shortage, women's rights and social benefits.
In March 2003, at the height of opposition to the Iraq war, the Socialists were ahead in polls. With the economy roaring and the Socialist Party in disarray, the Popular Party pulled ahead. On March 7, the last date in which polls were published, an Opina poll showed that the gap had narrowed, giving the Popular Party 42 percent, compared with 38 percent for the Socialists.
Four days later, terror struck. With Madrid under siege, voters were expected to rally around the flag and stick with the party that had talked the toughest against terrorism, at least initially. Even the Socialists braced themselves for that outcome, said two senior party officials.
But interviews with scores of Spaniards of both parties indicated that a number of things happened after the attacks that shifted the balance to the Socialists. Voters flooded the polls on Sunday in record numbers, especially young people who had not planned to vote. In interviews, they said they did so not so much out of fear of terror as out of anger against a government they saw as increasingly authoritarian, arrogant and stubborn. The government, they said, mishandled the crisis in the emotional days after the attacks.
Voters said they were enraged not only by the government's insistence that the Basque separatist group ETA was responsible, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, but they also resented its clumsy attempts to quell antigovernment sentiment.
For example, the main television channel TVE, which is state-owned, showed scant and selective scenes of antigovernment demonstrations on Saturday night, just as it ran very little coverage of the large demonstrations against the war in Iraq last year. It also suddenly changed its regular programming to air a documentary on the horrors of ETA.
That was the last straw for some Spaniards, who said it evoked the nightmare of censorship during the Franco dictatorship little more than a quarter of a century ago.
Prime Minister José María Aznar personally called the top editors of Spain's major dailies twice on the day of the attacks. In the first round of calls, Mr. Aznar said he was convinced that ETA was responsible.
"He said, `It was ETA, Antonio, don't doubt it in the least,' " said Antonio Franco, editor in chief of the Barcelona-based El Periódico de Catalunya, in an interview.
Mr. Franco's newspaper published a special edition based on Mr. Aznar's call, then Mr. Franco published an editorial rectifying the mistake as new information came to light. "It was shameful to me that the whole world was taking precautions and debating about Al Qaeda except in Spain, where the attack occurred," he said.
At the Spanish news agency EFE, Alfonso Bauluz, a correspondent and member of the agency's union, said, "I received information from my colleagues, who have good sources, about the Al Qaeda hypothesis, but the editor said we don't want that, don't pay attention. On Saturday, the editor wrote a story with his own byline saying all possibilities of an Al Qaeda connection were thrown out."
During Mr. Aznar's second call that evening, he acknowledged that other avenues were being investigated, but discounted them, Mr. Franco said.
Meanwhile, within 24 hours of the terrorist attacks, the Socialists, through their own intelligence and diplomatic contacts in the Muslim world, were already leaning toward the theory that Al Qaeda and not ETA was responsible, two senior Socialist Party officials said.
Spaniards are still struggling to absorb both the shock of the terror attacks and interpret the result of the upset election on Sunday.
"The terrorism attack has changed the result of the election, but the people were also deceived by the government, so it's a combination, a mix of the two of things," said Elena Roldán, a 28-year-old law librarian who voted Socialist.
Asked whether she felt the United States bore some responsibility for encouraging Spain to join its war against Iraq, she replied, "Nobody forced Aznar to go to war; the entire country was against it. Nobody has been saying that the United States was responsible for this attack, but everybody holds the Spanish government responsible."
At the bus and train terminal at Plaza de la Castilla in northern Madrid, Alberto Martín, a 31-year-old nuclear physicist who voted Socialist, said, "If the government had said, `We don't know who did it,' nothing would have happened and Zapatero would not be there. Aznar was making decisions without any consideration for people's concerns. Look at the war in Iraq. Aznar thought he was God! There was no dialogue."
The election, Mr. Martín added, "is a victory for the people, not for terrorism. You see, I'm now going to take the train."
Hélène Fouquet and Dale Fuchs contributed reporting for this article.
The sad but amazing thing about this all is how those on the left, at least the mainstream left, are very quailed at the results in Spain. They too KNOW that this has been a victory for the terrorists, and in their hearts, they know the terrorists are wrong. The gals writing for the NY Times don't want to wear the burkha anymore than us gals at FR do.
May the election victory in Spain be the last success ever for the Islamofacists hordes.
El Qaida sadly will feel encouraged by this and it might trigger more alike efforts in the future, but any talk of watering down the democratic spirit to freely vote ("If you vote against ...., you must be with terrorists") actually plays into the hands of El Qaida.
The Spanish decided in a free election and that shall be respected, and I agree with the article that it was mostly due to the extremly lousy post-bombing-handling by Aznar. (And while I am Bush-critical, I must give Bush credit that he handled the time directly past 9/11 much better than Aznar with his desperate ETA-blaming)
Only the weak and foolish will allow murderous thugs to influence policy. President Bush has taken them on. The rest of the world (including the democrats in America) are cowards.
From what I've read on ETA, their biggest concern was declining support and money problems...
Al Queda's biggest problem is Islamic "profiling" and close scrutiny by EU law enforcement..
ETA had the connections. They could get the explosives and materials, and were "native" to the area.. could travel without undue suspicion..
AQ had the money.. They could pay for said materials, and could also come up with a plan and operatives that was completely unlike the usual ETA operation..
I too believe there was most likely a cooperative effort between the 2 terrorist organizations..
Historically speaking, what's the difference?
Well said, and I agree that this was a pretty amazingly balanced piece from the New York Times.
We're actually dealing with similar issues here in America, but from the press as opposed to the government. Our so-called mainstream media has been deceiving (I would call it outright lying to) the American people for quite some time now on several issues relating to the War on Terrorism, particularly in regards to Saddam's long-standing association with Muslim terrorists, and the fact that we were the reciepients of a biological anthrax attack from said Muslim terrorists in the wake of 9/11. And just like with the Spanish government, these lies and coverups are due to nothing more than just pure hardball politics.
Why would I troll, when I am honest? A troll is something else.
And I am here to better understand the Bush-supporters, as our media here presents mostly only the left US-voices, aside from the Bush-administration himself.
I see you CC'd to admin. Calling for them why? Well, if these and all my past postings and discussions on here with Freepers are not allowed (but loads of hostile remarks like "Euroscum" are welcome), then be it - it would also teach me a lesson about Bush-supporters and I go back to our media here. Though so far, you are the first to react so hostile.
However, the fact that the conclusion is dangerous, and decidedly unpleasant for the European appeasment-oriented mind to contemplate, does not make it any less true. [Rather like Nietzsche's alte Weibchen's "kleine Wahrheit" in Also Sprach Zarathustra or Goethe's euconium to double entry bookkeeping in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahare]
The Barbarians are really at the gates of Europe again. The European policy of appeasement will be about as effective as waiting for the return of Friedrich Barbarosa.
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