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This is a fateful moment for the world's democracies. The question before us could not be plainer. Do we stand together against the mortal threat posed by Islamic totalitarianism and terror? Or do we allow these murderers to divide and defeat us? For that is quite obviously their strategy: divide and conquer. If the events of the past week are anything to go by, it is working. The commuter-train attacks in Madrid have succeeded beyond the terrorists' fondest hopes. Not only did they cause shocking bloodshed -- 202 dead as of yesterday, tying the toll of the Bali bombings in...

Three days after the worst terror attack in continental Europe since World War II, Spain voted to capitulate. In compliance with the demands made in an Al Qaeda videotape, the Socialist prime minister elect, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, announced yesterday that Spain would withdraw its 1,300 troops from Iraq -- unless, of course, the U.S. turns over the whole operation to the incompetent United Nations. We have seen the spectacle of nine million Spaniards, demonstrating their grief in the streets, their hands raised and painted white in a poignant gesture of mass surrender. This quotation, to a New York Times...

Spain Will Legalise Gay 'Marriages' - Zapatero Thu Mar 18, 2004 04:04 PM ET MADRID (Reuters) - Spain will legalize gay unions, although it may not call them marriages, incoming prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said on Thursday, but he did not set a time-frame for the move. "We are going to present a bill to set gay unions on the same footing as marriage," he said in an interview on Spain's Telecinco television channel. "From a semantic point of view marriage may be a concept that does not cover this type of union, but it will have the...

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world. A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in...

Frontpage Interview has the pleasure to have Victor Hanson, author of the new book "Between War and Peace: Lessons from Afghanistan to Iraq", as its guest today. Frontpage Magazine: Mr. Hanson, it is a pleasure to have you join Frontpage Interview. Welcome. Hanson: Thank you for having me again. FP: This collection of your 35 previously published essays, most of them from NRO, is extremely impressive. Their themes apply exactly to our latest tragedy and crisis in Spain. One of your special expertises is on how leftists, and some of our European allies, have chosen to side with our enemy....

<p>The ghost of Neville Chamberlain is haunting Europe, preaching pacifism and appeasement and promising "peace in our time" in the war against terrorism.</p> <p>This is the frightening apparition that rose out of the wreckage, blood and body parts in the Madrid train station bombing on the eve of Spain's national elections — that had all the hallmarks of al Qaeda at work. When the smoke cleared and the votes were cast, the terrorists had won their first major political victory on the European Continent.</p>

Now that Spain has rejected its pro-American government in the wake of the Madrid bombings and Osama bin Laden has effectively become the Spanish Foreign Minister, the question is not so much “Why did this happen?” but “What took so long?” What is really surprising is not Spain’s spectacular act of appeasement but the fact that the anti-terror Aznar government bucked Europe’s prevailing winds in the first place. For over thirty years, Europe — including Spain — has been preparing for this moment: doing everything possible to transform itself into the newest homeland of a resurgent political Islam. The renowned...

The tactics of the pro-war crowd who’ve hung in there knowing we were lied to and watching a war about to enter its second year never change. The Spanish people are now appeasers, as is everyone else who opposed the war for what turned out to be bloody good reasons and now want the UN to take over as quickly as possible to end the US/British/Australian occupation.  Please have a read of New Spanish government a circuit breaker on Iraq by new Webdiarist Sam Guthrie. And please, Miranda Devine and co, accept that we all want to fight terrorism....

<p>MADRID -- Spain will have a new government now: it is Socialist, as we know, and vehemently opposed to the war in Iraq. The prime minister-elect, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, is an old-fashioned European man of the left: pacifist in his "distaste" for war, and deeply anti-American in his posturing and rhetoric, to say nothing of his innermost instincts. If one were, as a laboratory experiment, to manufacture precisely the sort of Spanish leader the U.S. would find most uncooperative at this juncture in history, he would resemble Mr. Zapatero almost exactly.</p>

After a terrorist attack by al-Qaida that left hundreds of their fellow countrymen dead, Spanish voters immediately voted to give the terrorists what they want – a socialist government that opposes America's war on terrorism. Al-Qaida has changed a government. Until the bombings last week, the center-right Popular Party of outgoing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar had been sailing to victory. But then the al-Qaida bombs went off and Spaniards turned out in droves to vote against the government that had been a staunch Bush ally in the war on terrorism. (I guess it's OK for a Spanish socialist to...

AFTER A terrorist attack by al-Qaida that left hundreds of their fellow countrymen dead, Spanish voters immediately voted to give the terrorists what they want -- a Socialist government that opposes America's war on terrorism. Al-Qaida has changed a government. Until the bombings last week, the center-right Popular Party of outgoing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar had been sailing to victory. But then the al-Qaida bombs went off and Spaniards turned out in droves to vote against the government that had been a staunch Bush ally in the war on terrorism. (I guess it's OK for a Spanish Socialist to...

Spain's vote Sunday was a cry of anguish. Almost eight of 10 voters turned out to deliver an upset victory to the opponents of the war in Iraq. Some Spanish voters were angry that Spanish soldiers had joined the American-led coalition. Many were furious that their government would blame Basque separatists for last week's train bombings when all signs really pointed to al-Qaida. And all of Spain was still in shock and mourning over those terrible attacks. But this should be understood, too, in Spain and across the rest of the free world: The Spanish people have sent a dangerously...

After a terrorist attack by al-Qaida that left hundreds of their fellow countrymen dead, Spanish voters immediately voted to give the terrorists what they want – a socialist government that opposes America's war on terrorism. Al-Qaida has changed a government. Until the bombings last week, the center-right Popular Party of outgoing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar had been sailing to victory. But then the al-Qaida bombs went off and Spaniards turned out in droves to vote against the government that had been a staunch Bush ally in the war on terrorism. (I guess it's OK for a Spanish socialist to...

<p>Until Thursday's terrorist attacks on Madrid's rail system, there was every indication that Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's Popular Party would prevail in parliamentary elections Sunday. But a significant number of Spanish voters evidently concluded that, by forging a close alliance with the United States and supporting the war in Iraq, Mr. Aznar had invited retribution from terrorists.</p>

Spain has just had its own 9/11, literally. The population of the US is almost eight times as large as that of Spain. So a fair comparison is that on 3/11 Spain suffered the equivalent of 1,600 dead and 12,000 injured. And in response to that, Spain has retreated from the war against terror. Does the US face the possibility of a Madrid mistake, especially in the weeks leading up to the November presidential election? I had the extreme displeasure last week of hearing Professor Beau Grosscup of California State University at Chico, arguing on TV that we should “understand”...

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...

David Frum thinks that the terrorists have won a mighty victory in Spain. Victor Davis Hanson agrees and makes a couple of things very clear: "Let me get this straight. Two-and-a-half years after September 11, on a similar eleventh day of the month, 911 days following 9-11, and on the eve of Spanish elections, Al Qaeda or its epigones blows up 200 and wounds 1,400 Spaniards. This horrific attack follows chaotic months when Turks were similarly butchered (who opposed the Iraq War), Saudis were targeted (who opposed the Iraqi war), Moroccans were blown apart (who opposed the Iraqi war) and...

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, the famous Spanish author of the book 'Don Quijote' (short title) once wrote "He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more; but he that loses his courage loses all." How profound those words are, and certainly must be to many of the people who have lost the second of those first two things, in this war we now fight. How dispiriting it is as well that so many others, following the sickening terrorist attacks of March 11 in Madrid, now seem to have lost that precious third thing. The loss of...

The terrorist attack in Madrid and its seismic impact on the Spanish elections this past week have brought the United States and Europe to the edge of the abyss. There's no denying that al Qaeda has struck a strategic and not merely a tactical blow. To murder and terrorize people is one thing, but to unseat a pro-U.S. government in a nation that was a linchpin of America's alliance with the so-called New Europe -- that is al Qaeda's most significant geopolitical success since Sept. 11, 2001. The unhappy reality is that a significant number of Spanish voters seem to...

Spain would be sending out a "terrible message" if it let terrorists influence its policies, the White House said yesterday as President George W Bush urged his European allies not to abandon the Iraqi people. The blunt comments were softened by hints that Washington might propose a fresh United Nations mandate on Iraq, answering a major demand of the new Spanish leader, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. "It is essential that we remain side by side with the Iraqi people," Mr Bush said. Mr Zapatero, the new Spanish leader The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said: "Terrorists must not be allowed...