This is required reading. I've not read a better summation of the situation than this article from The Scotsman.
Spanish vote sends out wrong message
FRASER NELSON
TERRORISM has never known a victory like it. Killing 200 commuters ranks high in the annals of slaughter - but no-one has successfully unleashed a political aftermath which has toppled an enemy government.
The bombers have achieved something which terrorists had never thought possible. Murder enough voters at election time, it appears, and it is possible to engineer your own regime change. Spain’s election shows that terrorism works.
Whatever the reality of the vote, and the politics, this is how the result can now be portrayed - a country raising the white flag to the gunmen.
A precedent has been set which will now haunt every democratic election in the free world.
Those who asked "why Madrid?" last week would have heard their answer in full when José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Spain’s prime minister-elect, launched a blistering attack against Tony Blair and George Bush for toppling Saddam Hussein.
The dictator’s removal was a "huge disaster", he said, which "divided more than it united" and the attempts to democratise Iraq, the reconstruction programme, the immunisation programme, are also a "huge disaster".
As if making his way down an al-Qaeda wish list, Mr Zapatero then accused Mr Blair and Mr Bush of "lying", and pledged to pull out the 1,300 Spanish troops currently deployed in hunting down terrorists in Iraq. Osama Bin Laden would have been dancing in his cave.
There was condemnation of terrorism - but as terrorists know very well, actions speak louder than words. And the actions were of a country which has, in response to a bomb, abandoned its part in helping Iraq’s transition to democracy.
The truth is, as always, complex. José Maria Aznar’s Party Populare (PP) won 148 seats against the 164 of its socialist rival. Of Spain’s 40 million population, fewer than 550,000 voters swung the balance of power. This was no nationwide Damascene conversion.
Several million Spaniards, even socialist supporters, will today have their head in their hands, having voted for Aznar through gritted teeth - purely on the grounds that terrorism cannot be seen to decide the result of their election.
And if the campaign had been on a knife-edge, or even closely-run, the PP’s defeat would matter little. But for the last three months, the PP was riding so high in the polls that even the socialists were talking as if their defeat was inevitable.
Then the terrorists struck, and the political landscape changed. It is impossible not to link the two - and this sends a message of weakness the world over: the course of democracy can be altered by bombs.
Aznar did not help matters by blaming ETA without evidence, and being seen to mislead the voters to further his own ends. But he was out-manipulated by al-Qaeda. "Your war, our dead," cried activists as Aznar cast his vote on Sunday - exactly the message the bombers wanted to imprint into the Spanish psyche.
So why Madrid? It can now be seen as the latest victim in al-Qaeda’s strategy of isolating the US by picking off the coalition allies most likely to be intimidated.
The purpose and direction of insurgents’ attacks in Iraq tell their own story. On 20 August, the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad was bombed: weeks later, most of its staff had pulled out, just as the terrorists intended. The same was true for the Red Cross, targeted two months later.
So when Madrid was attacked, the evidence suggests it was because its population were more likely to vote to pull out of Iraq. With 90 per cent opposed to the war, there was much hostility to stir up.
Al-Qaeda’s strategy is now to motivate its enemy’s enemy - weakening a government by giving a helping hand to its opposition. In most cases, this means giving ammunition for left-wing politicians.
It is hard to work out at which point the European Left - once the most strident enemies of right-wing dictators - should suddenly be the ones complaining that Saddam and the Taleban have been deposed.
Traditionally, the Right has been in favour of cutting deals with "friendly" dictators - which is why Saddam prospered under the Reagan-Thatcher years when he promised to fight the Iranians and sell cheap oil.
After 11 September, President Bush realised he had no choice but to reverse the tide of international terrorism by taking the fight to those who defied the international community. Primarily, this meant breaking free from the definition of "international law" - and the UN Security Council system where dictators like Saddam could buy allies to make sure they remain forever secure.
So, it seems, the Right are the ones turning dictatorships into democracies and spending billion vaccinating children and building hospitals - while the Left protest, saying this all violates "international law".
If such politics is disorientating for observers in the West, it seems to make perfect sense to al-Qaeda, which seems to have played the Spanish elections to perfection. Thanks to Spain’s new socialist government, they will soon not need to worry about Spanish soldiers hunting their colleagues who sow murder in Iraq.
Luckily for Mr Blair, he does not have a strong anti-war opposition - the British election will be far harder to manipulate. When the IRA attempted to blow up the Thatcher government in 1984, the nation united in contempt against it.
Unfortunately for al-Qaeda, Labour rebels are not standing as a political party and no terrorist would be foolish enough to place hopes on a Liberal Democrat victory. There is no similar scope to twist the course of a British general election.
But that is not to say that the insurgents will not try. Spain has just given the world the first election in history to be altered irrevocably by a terrorist attack. This is a new gold standard of terrorist accomplishment that others will attempt to follow.
Britain has repeatedly shown itself resilient to such outrages. But al-Qaeda’s impact in the Spanish elections means such terrorist attempts at campaign time are now more likely than they were two days ago - for Britain, Europe and the rest of the world.
Posted by floridacracker at March 16, 2004 06:42 PM