"If this is a victory for al Qaeda, it?s not a victory because the Spanish are seeking to appease terrorism. It?s a victory because it will be perceived by the current US administration and its supporters as being a defeat."
From Henry Fareel over at crooket timber.
I'm glad somebody is placing the blame for this on the right people. Everyone's talking about how this demonstrates that al Qaeda can affect elections... but what it really shows is that it actually matters how a government deals with terrorism. Note to Bush: covering it up just won't fly...
Once again, the basis of the American conservative worldview is on vivid display. Namely, that only two sides to any issue exist and middle ground is evidence of treachery or softheadedness. The intellectual dovetail with fundamentalist Christianity is hard to ignore.
Espousing that strategy works for a while, but eventually most folks come to realize that only having two colors in your moral crayon box does not equal being blessed with clarity. The issue here, the Corner's insults and protestations notwithstanding, is that occupying Iraq is not consistent with battling international terrorism. That view only holds together if you believe that all players in that region are essentially interchangeable.
The PP's ouster isn't a win for al-Qaeda, but it is definitely a stinging loss for the Bush league. And a well-deserved one, I'd add. As Zapatero was quoted, "Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush must do some reflection and self-criticism. You can't organize a war with lies." My money is on Berlusconi getting the heave-ho next.
Nuance me a river. Can we admit that just as sometimes posing binary opposites obscures complexity, so too insistance on complexity often serves as a dodge?
We'll never know what factors decided the Spanish election: but surely at least some *component* was the reasoning that Aznar, by backing Bush, put Spain at the risk of terrorist retaliation. How do we know this? Because Spaniards say so.
I see I haven't made myself clear.
1. Agree, there's no monocausal explanation
2. Nonetheless, one motivation that seems really likely for motivating a last minute socialist groundswell "*is* a desire to make Spain less of a target by doing fewer things perceived to piss Al Queda off. That's a depressing (to me) motivation, and seems reasonable to describe as appeasement.
3. Sure, there are lots of other possible motivations. People may have been motivated to dump PP because of their burning desire to destroy Al Queda root and branch. But that doesn't seem obviously *more* likely than the "depressing" scenario outlined in 2. To me, it seems less likely (indeed, mind-bogglingly so, but I admit we don't have the information to judge).
4. So in this sense multi-causality in this case can be a dodge. It ignores that one likely motivation for the late socialist surge was an 'appeasement' rationale.
Well, since we agree that monocausal explanations are a goose chase, we can thankfully shunt that aside. I don't make any pretensions to be able to peer inside the collective head of Spain, but observing the situation from the outside, I think motivations are markedly less important than resulting outcomes.
1. Stationing troops in Iraq does nothing to root out al Qaeda root and branch, since whatever AQ are there are very much newcomers.
2. AQ exists in much the same way that EarthFirst exists. It isn't a state or any sort of incorporated entity, but scattered cells with questionable abilities to communicate with one another. It clearly isn't a top-down organization and what top exists is in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Anybody with fertilizer and a blasting cap can be "al Qaeda" if they decide to be. That's the sort of threat you approach with police/intelligence work, not with armored columns and winged bombers.
3. I think this conversation is a little too fixated on the word "appeasement," which is chock full of historical implications that don't much apply to this situation. One man's appeasement is another man's good judgment. If anybody has done precisely what bin Laden wanted, it is GWB.
4. Again, Iraqis didn't bomb Spanish trains. At least from initial reports, the culprits are likely from North Africa. What I see (probably my own misperception) as the false binary in your argument is that if lessening their country's exposure to Islamic violence is appeasement, which is ipso facto bad, then they should actively work to piss off the jihadis.
5. From where I sit, Bush has bungled the war on terror badly by focussing on a non-player in the Islamic terror game. Unless you're a fan of the flypaper theory, I think it's wise for Spain to withdraw their troops from an utterly irrelevant and inflammatory occupation, then huddle up and figure out where they go from here.
6. As to that last point, all western countries ought to be examining the wisdom of confronting Islamic extremism by setting up an occupation that can't help but remind Muslims of Palestine.
I guess you could call that appeasement, but I'd call it trying to maximize allocation of resources and effort. Patrolling Najaf or Karbala simply doesn't make Spain or Poland or Iraq or us any safer from a shadowy, global death cult.
You're convinced that Iraq is irrelevant to the "war on terror." So for you, opposing the Bush plan for Iraq is the best wat to "give Al Queda hell." Fine.
But I think some Spaniards don't agree with you. Rather, these people think Al Queda wants Bush to fail in Iraq. And they're hoping that by pulling out of Iraq, they lessen their exposure to Islamic fanatics *not* by diverting resources to better anti-terror campaigns, but by getting the out of the line of fire.
Of course, this is motivation talk. But motivations are important -- particularly the motivations that terrorists perceive western societies to have. I think it's bad if terrorists think they can reliably topple the regimes they see as their adversaries by killing civillians. You agree with that, I imagine.
So for you, opposing the Bush plan for Iraq is the best wat to "give Al Queda hell."
No. Irrelevant means just that - irrelevant. But going along with it doesn't do anything to give them hell. Doing something effective beats just doing some-damn-thing every time. Doing nothing beats doing something counter-productive. Iraq and AQ are two separate issues, until Bush consciously and disingenuously conflates them. All those troops in Iraq didn't stop bombings in Bali, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Spain, or anywhere else. The fact that Bush and bin Laden see each other as arch-enemies doesn't mean that you have to swallow every plan from one in order to express opposition to the other.
some Spaniards don't agree with you
That's true no matter what nationality you plug in. Some of my best friends don't agree with me.
Al Queda wants Bush to fail in Iraq
Of course they do. They want Bush to fail at whatever he does. That doesn't make "succeeding" in Iraq some sort of blow against al Qaeda. It's simply a blow against the memory of Saddam. The two aren't the same. Bush and Aznar insist that Iraq is the front line in the WOT. Zapatero insisted that it was not. He had the better argument, by far.
topple the regimes they see as their adversaries by killing civillians.
Killing civilians is bad regardless of the reasons behind it. This week's election wasn't exactly "toppling a regime." It was a parliamentary election where the control of government changed hands. This happens regularly in parliamentary democracies. It's supposed to happen regularly. I doubt that AQ views the Socialists as any more or less an adversary or ally than the PP. They don't give a good goddamn who runs Spain, since they're all just degenerate infidels ever since the Moors were defeated 500 years ago.
Again, this isn't a binary opposition (support Bush/Aznar policies or support al-Qaeda). What positive results did the Spanish people get from taking part in the invasion of Iraq? None. They did, however, get negative results. When you notice you're in a hole, the first action item is to stop digging.
Idon't understand why. There seems to be plenty of information that the PP was not interested in blaming AQ for the bombings. They kept accusing the ETA even after they knew better. Does that look like a serious concentration of terrorism? Or does it look like the PP was running away from terrorism? To me, it seems the latter.
This should have been above the my paragraph, last post.
3. Sure, there are lots of other possible motivations. People may have been motivated to dump PP because of their burning desire to destroy Al Queda root and branch. But that doesn't seem obviously *more* likely than the "depressing" scenario outlined in 2. To me, it seems less likely (indeed, mind-bogglingly so, but I admit we don't have the information to judge).
I never meant to suggest there's an binary opposition between supporting Bush and supporting Al Queda. There is however, a binary opposition between agressively opposing islamic terrorism and not doing that.
Maybe I'm going about this the wrong way. So let me ask you all this: Is there any imaginable evidence that *would* lead you to conclude that the Spanish results represented to a large degree the conscious desire by Spanish voters to get "out of the line of fire," and adopt a less confrontational approach to Islamic terrorism? What would it take to convince you that this is so?
We're talking past one another. But at least we're doing it politely, and I appreciate that.
Is there any imaginable evidence that *would* lead you to conclude that the Spanish results represented to a large degree the conscious desire by Spanish voters to get "out of the line of fire," and adopt a less confrontational approach to Islamic terrorism? What would it take to convince you that this is so?
Nothing. I agree with you that played an enormous and probably decisive role. I would quibble over whether withdrawing from Iraq represents a less confrontational approach to Islamic terror, since that battle is taking place on a much larger stage than Mesopotamia and is being waged primarily by intelligence agencies, not armies. Engaging in Iraq is a tactical decision, not a strategic one. I happen to think it's a perfectly awful tactical decision, but there are plenty of people much smarter than me on both sides of that question.
I think where we are disagreeing is whether the existence of those motivations are ipso facto a bad thing. To me, that's a perfectly rational motivation. Spain's problem is in Spain, now quite demonstrably, not in the sands of Iraq. The struggle against AQ and their ideological brethren will not be won or lost there.
So, whether the Spaniards' motivations were unsullied doesn't matter to me at all. What matters is that they make the right decision. If joining on as the third leg in Bush's Axis of Badass to overthrow the government least sympathetic to AQ was a bad decision (which I and a huge majority of pre-invasion Spain believed), then staying on in order to prove a point about steadfastness and intestinal fortitude to al-Qaeda is still being manipulated by terrorists. And to worse ends.
That's why I wanted to move away from labelling it appeasement, which is a word loaded with inescapable Chamberlain allusions, and is being used by the National Review guys with that specifically in mind. The differences between acquiescing to Germany's usurpation of a neighboring state and the situation in Iraq are enormous.