Posted on 03/17/2004 3:31:02 AM PST by Clive
The defeat in this past weekend's Spanish elections of a government that stalwartly backed the U.S. war on terror is a victory for militant Islam and the followers of Osama bin Laden - and we are all more vulnerable as a result.
Even if it turns out Islamic terrorists didn't plant the bombs which took the lives of 200 commuters in Madrid, Spanish voters assumed they did and turned what was expected to be an electoral romp for the governing Popular Party into a stunning rejection, handing power to a left-wing coalition that believes you can negotiate with terrorists.
The voters' logic was simple and appalling.
According to the opinion polls, upwards of 80% of Spaniards disagreed with Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's support for George Bush, yet those same polls suggested the Spanish electorate was about to return his effective and otherwise popular government to power.
Until last week's bombings, which many voters apparently decided were the fault not of bloody-minded terrorists trying to pervert a democratic election, but of a government staunchly opposed to political violence.
Don't blame the terrorists, blame the government! Despite all evidence to the contrary, too many Spanish voters bought in to the fatuous notion that if you leave the terrorists alone they will leave you alone.
In the wake of the elections there was much criticism of PM Aznar for quickly placing the blame for the bombings on the Basque separatist group ETA, before there was evidence to finger any particular terrorist group. Perhaps he did jump the gun in an attempt to deflect potential public criticism away from his government's support of the Americans. If so, his party paid a stiff price for such a crass miscalculation.
But in searching through a mountain of commentary in several dozen newspapers online, I was able to find just one criticism of the opposition Socialist Party for turning Spain's support for the war on terror into a partisan election issue, which, you might argue, made Spain an even more tempting target for bombers looking to disrupt a democratic election for their own ends.
Buried beneath all the glib insight were the real issues of whether defeating a government opposed to political violence is a victory for the terrorists, which it surely is, and whether electing a government that is soft on terror is likely to improve the security of the Spanish people, which seems preposterous.
It is a pretty safe bet that Spain will have ample opportunity to regret last weekend's emotional and illogical vote. Even if ETA had absolutely nothing to do with the Madrid bombings, it has now seen what can be accomplished by truly spectacular and bloody political violence. ETA's operatives are probably already contemplating the next atrocity and building bigger bombs.
As for the rest of us: The Islamic extremists have discovered that not only can they blow up buildings and bring down aircraft, they can bring down governments that oppose them. All they need to do is slaughter enough innocents.
Who could possibly regard this as rational or positive?
Is it really so difficult to understand that political violence in one jurisdiction feeds off the success of terrorism elsewhere - everywhere? Or that there has never been a situation where appeasement of terrorists resulted in greater peace and security?
Extremists of bin Laden's ilk never tire of talking about their war on democracy, western values (if such a phrase has not become an oxymoron), and even the lofty goal of reconquering "Al-Andalus" - Spain, to the uninitiated.
Yet we choose not to hear it, or not to take it seriously, until somebody blows up our next-door neighbour on the train to work. And then we blame the people who did take it seriously, because they must have been asking for it.
In Britain this week the authorities dusted off an old campaign warning travellers to be more vigilant, and 2,100 police officers began patrolling railway and subway stations. After more than three decades of IRA terrorism, they get it. The Spanish vote was an invitation to terror. It won't be ignored.
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