16 march 2004
Evidence of Islamist involvement has grown steadily. Yesterday's El Pais reported that an Arabic document found on the internet suggested that al-Qa'eda was planning an attack before the elections.
Spain was identified as “a weak link” in the US-led coalition in Iraq as the document noted that a majority of Spaniards was against the war.
“For the maximum effect” it suggested an attack just before the elections. “Spain could not tolerate more than two or three attacks without having to withdraw its troops from Iraq.”
A crude taxonomy of bloggers is “linkers” vs. “thinkers.” The former primarily link to other weblogs, or to news stories of interest, while the latter prefer deeper analysis. I aspire to be numbered among the thinkers—after all, I'm this close to being a PhD candidate in philosophy of science—but on days like today I am acutely aware of just how far short my efforts fall.
So enough about me. Let's check in with the pros.
Mark Steyn:
At the end of last week, American friends kept saying to me: “3/11 is Europe's 9/11. They get it now.” I expressed scepticism. And I very much doubt whether March 11 will be a day that will live in infamy. Rather, March 14 seems likely to be the date bequeathed to posterity, in the way we remember those grim markers on the road to conflagration through the 1930s, the tactical surrenders that made disaster inevitable. All those umbrellas in the rain at Friday's marches proved to be pretty pictures for the cameras, nothing more. The rain in Spain falls mainly on the slain. In the three days between the slaughter and the vote, it was widely reported that the atrocity had been designed to influence the election. In allowing it to do so, the Spanish knowingly made Sunday a victory for appeasement and dishonoured their own dead.
And, if it works in Spain, why not in Australia, Britain, Italy, Poland? In his 1996 “Declaration of War Against the Americans”, Bin Laden cited Washington's feebleness in the face of the 1992 Aden hotel bombings and the Black Hawk Down business in Somalia in 1993: “You have been disgraced by Allah and you withdrew,” he wrote. “The extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear.” To the jihadis' way of thinking, on Thursday, the Spaniards were disgraced by Allah; on Sunday, they withdrew. The extent of their impotence and weaknesses is very clear.
Collin May, guest writing at EurSoc:
[R]eactions to terrorism are telling, precisely because they can either confirm or refute the terrorists’ presumptions. This vote against the Popular Party in itself is neither the confirmation nor the refutation we may be looking for. What will be important is how other leaders react - will they begin to turn their backs on the US? This, after all, was the point of the attack. The terrorists are seeking to isolate the US and play on the rot they see in the other democracies. If the other western democracies begin to turn against the Americans, if they refuse to step up to the plate, then the terrorists’ assessments regarding European democracy, at least, will be proven true.
And this brings me to some other rather more chilling points. Some may argue that it’s not so much a matter of whether or not Europe will stand up to terrorists, but simply a question of how it will be done. It could plausibly be said that Europeans will opt for more multilateral actions, more subtle responses than did the US. The Europeans will work through the UN and the international community. But there’s the rub. The terrorists see these organizations and all this talk of multilateralism as nothing but the hollow rhetoric of corrupt European politicos. They know they can intimidate and manipulate the UN; they’ve already seen how Arab nations, voting as a block, can ensure that the Israeli delegation to the UN drowns under a tidalwave of UN condemnations.
What is occurring is nothing short of the manipulation of European democracy by terrorism. And this is the key point here. The terrorists attacked the US and the US fought back. They found that the US, famed for its fear of seeing its soldiers come home in body bags, was not so afraid. So, they’ve changed tactics and are going after the Europeans now. Surely they must have been heartened by the display of perfidy put on by the French and German governments during the buildup to Iraq, now they’re just taking it a step further. […]
It seems Europe is now sitting on a knife’s edge. Its reaction to what has happened will either refute what the terrorists say about European democracy, or it will confirm their views. Ultimately, Europe will be put to the test. For some time now, I’ve argued that Europe, with France at the lead, is falling. Of course, I’ve also noted that, unlike France, right of centre governments in the rest of Europe will often side with the US. Terrorists understand this, and so they’re attempting to use democratic institutions, and the weaknesses to which such institutions are prone, in order to bring down those right of centre governments.
The Belmont Club:
The victory of the Socialist Party in Spain and its probable withdrawal from an active alliance with the United States in the Global War on Terror is a decisive victory for the forces of freedom everywhere — although this is not immediately apparent. It establishes the iron linkage between Eurosocialism and militant Islam, indeed demonstrates for all the world to see the subordination of the Euroleft to the Global Jihad. The last claim of Marxism-Leninism to the leadership of history is gone. They are the liveried flunkeys of Sheik Osama. Long may they enjoy it.
The events in Spain show it is no longer possible to embrace both Eurosocialism and national independence; Eurosocialism and national defense; Eurosocialism and survival. The two have become incompatible states. You can have one but not the other. And since men must live and live to breathe free, Eurosocialism must in the end pass into the night chained to its boon companions. […]
Although many commentators have excoriated the Spanish electorate for its capitulation to terror, we must never forget that the slightly smaller half decisively rejected it. These we honor and the rest we pity.
BC also links to this post at Regnum Crucis describing the links between the Basque ETA and Palestinian Hamas. Such ties are not surprising: the nexus between the Irish Republican Army and the Columbian FARC has been well publicized, for instance. There are also persistent rumors of Islamist activity in the “tri-border” frontier region of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay; and moreover that Venezuelan President and tinpot Marxist Hugo Chavez is actively supporting Muslim extremists.
In short, those who claim that ideological differences would have prevented Saddam's secular Ba'athists from collaborating with Sunni al Qaeda franchises are either ignorant or disingenuous.
read the rest »
Christopher Hitchens:
It is tedious to relate the story of ETA's degeneration into a gangster organization that itself proclaims a fascist ideology of Basque racial uniqueness, and anyway one doesn't need to bother, since nobody any longer argues that there is a “root cause” of ETA's atrocities. In the face of this kind of subhuman nihilism, people know without having to be told that the only response is a quiet, steady hatred and contempt, and a cold determination to outlast the perpetrators while remorselessly tracking them down.
However, it seems that some Spaniards, and some non-Spanish commentators, would change on a dime if last week's mass murder in Madrid could be attributed to the Bin-Ladenists. In that case not only would there be a root cause—the deployment of 1,300 Spanish soldiers in the reconstruction of Iraq—but there would also be a culpable person, namely Spain's retiring prime minister. By this logic, terrorism would also have a cure—the withdrawal of those Spanish soldiers from a country where al-Qaida emphatically does not desire them to be.
Try not to laugh or cry, but some spokesmen of the Spanish left have publicly proposed exactly this syllogism. I wonder if I am insulting the readers of Slate if I point out its logical and moral deficiencies:
Many Spaniards were among those killed recently in Morocco, where a jihadist bomb attack on an ancient Moorish synagogue took place in broad daylight. The attack was on Morocco itself, which was neutral in the recent Iraq war. It seems a bit late to demand that the Moroccan government change sides and support Saddam Hussein in that conflict, and I suspect that the Spanish Communist and socialist leadership would feel a little sheepish in making this suggestion. Nor is it obvious to me that the local Moroccan jihadists would stop bombing if this concession were made. Still, such a concession would be consistent with the above syllogism, as presumably would be a demand that Morocco cease to tempt fate by allowing synagogues on its soil in the first place.
The Turkish government, too, should be condemned for allowing its Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to visit the shattered synagogue in Istanbul after the latest mass murder (thus becoming, incidentally, the first Turkish prime minister ever to do so). Erdogan is also the first prime minister ever to be elected on an Islamist ticket. Clearly, he was asking for trouble and has not yet understood al-Qaida's conditions for being allowed to lead a quiet life. Not that he hadn't tried—he prevented the U.S. Army from approaching Baghdad through what is now known as the Sunni Triangle. He just hasn't tried hard enough.
It cannot be very long now before some slaughter occurs on the streets of London or Rome or Warsaw, as punishment for British and Italian and Polish membership of the anti-Saddam coalition. But perhaps there is still time to avoid the wrath to come. If British and Italian and Polish troops make haste to leave the Iraqis to their own “devices” (of the sort that exploded outside the mosques of Karbala and Najaf last month), their civilian cousins may still hope to escape the stern disapproval of the holy warriors. Don't ask why the holy warriors blow up mosques by the way—it's none of your goddam crusader-Jew business.
The pseudo-Spengler:
Spain's death-knell sounded long before the train bombings in Madrid, however. No country in the world is more determined to disappear. The country's fertility rate of 1.12 live births per female is the lowest in the world. As recently as 1975, at the death of strongman Francisco Franco, the fertility rate stood at 3 births per female in 1976. By 2050 Spain will have lost a quarter of its population. Germany and Italy, whose fertility rates fell earlier than Spain's, will lose a third, according to economist Anthony Scholefield.
Half a millennium after the Reconquista, when Spanish Catholicism expelled the country's Muslims and Jews, Spain has no choice but to ask the Muslims to return and take possession of its land by stages. […]
Except for a trickle of immigrants from Latin America, North Africa provides most of Spain's immigrants at present. Two hundred thousand Muslims now reside in Spain, and they have built 100 new mosques in the past 10 years. Unless Spain were, most improbably, to attempt a recolonization from Latin America, it cannot do without more Muslims.
Socialist voters may not have worked out the arithmetic; Jose Zapatero's supporter in the street simply does not want to be burdened with America's distant wars, especially if they draw fire at home. It all amounts to the same thing. Countries too lazy to produce their next generation will not fight. Who will lay down his life for future generations when the future generations simply will not be there?
David Warren:
The Spanish Socialists exploited the shock and grief of last Thursday's murderous attacks on Madrid's transit rail system, with demonstrations on the eve of the election. The outgoing government of Prime Minister José María Aznar was accused of “lying to the Spanish people” by suggesting that the attack might have been mounted by the Basque ETA, and thus have nothing to do with Iraq. In defiance of Spanish electoral law, and disregarding the period of mourning that had been agreed by all parties, the Socialist partisans shouted that the blood of Spain was on Aznar's hands.
Let what it did stand to the eternal credit of Mr. Aznar's government. In the early morning of Sunday before the polls had yet opened, and in the full knowledge of what the consequences might be to its electoral prospects, it released information about the capture of Moroccan and Indian Jihadists, and the receipt of the videotape, that left no doubt about the authorship of the carnage.
Analysis and homily must converge in what I have to say today. There is no ambiguity in what has happened in Spain. The rotten heart of Europe has been exposed. The best comparison one can make is to Europe in 1940, when the entire continent had capitulated to Nazism and fascism, leaving Britain alone to fight. It thus came to be known as “Churchill's war”, rather than “Hitler's war”, only to revert when the Allies had won it, and a generation of Europeans, who had not lifted a finger, decided retrospectively that they had been in the Resistance.
The position of Tony Blair's government in Britain today is further undermined by the Spanish vote, so that it is quite possible that the British, too, may soon abandon what the Europeans now choose to call “Bush's war”, rather than “Osama's war”. […]
One must not, under the present circumstances, sound an uncertain trumpet. All men of goodwill, regardless of nation, are fighting the Jihadists in Afghanistan and Iraq, as we fought the Nazis in Italy and France; and if the Americans must fight them alone, so be it. Then as now we made a lot of blather about “democracy”. But screw democracy, we are fighting an enemy of civilization, an embodiment of real evil. There is no compromise with such an enemy, no capitulation to him, no way to avoid casualties, no easy way out. We defeat him, or he defeats us.
But Romano Prodi, head of the European Commission, begs to differ:
“It is clear that using force is not the answer to resolving the conflict with terrorists,” Prodi said. “Terrorism is infinitely more powerful than a year ago.”
Let us pray that not every European heart is as sick with cowardice.
“It needs but one foe to breed a war, not two, Master Warden,” answered Éowyn. “And those who have not swords can still die upon them.”
—The Lord of the Rings, Book VI, “The Steward and the King”
UPDATE. It's the French, too: Steven Den Beste notes the reaction to the latest suicide attack in Israel.
[T]o prove how tough they are on terrorism, especially when French nationals getting killed, exactly what is the government of France doing to try to bring pressure on the Palestinians to stop making terrorist attacks? Apparently nothing. It's the usual; a perfunctory pro forma general condemnation and an equal exhortation to both sides to cease killing one another and engage in dialogue.
They don't even seem to think there was any reason to indicate which side made this terrorist attack. No, there has not been any sea-change.
There's another thing coming up to watch for as a bellwether: as part of their “My God! We've got to do something which doesn't involve deploying troops!” response to it all, the Europeans are going to formulate an official common definition of the word “terrorism”. I expect the result to be quite amusing. Will it be categorical, or will it be complicated and nuanced? You get one guess.
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