I know most US voters don’t care about what happens elsewhere and Aznar’s party losing in Spain will hardly matter in the US. Still in terms of other european countries and electoral situation… and in foreign policy what are the effects of the probable election results in Spain ?
My conjecture: Spanish voters will show that supporting Bush brings not only the risk of terrorism, but voters rejection as well. Support Bush and lose elections is the message to European allies and wannabe allies.
The coalition of the willing might become less willing too. Especially if they have little to gain from “fighting terrorism” as is the case of Denmark for example. This might affect the US election when Bush tries to say he is not an unilateralist… if he loses many of his european stooges.
Security wise it also shows that Europeans in general, with the exception of the UK, that is an island is more vunerable to terrorism than the cash laden USA. Spain of all europeans should be the country most prepared to deal with terrorists as they still have an active ETA… and Al Qaeda still pulled off the attack.
The implication is simple: Spain wants to be ruled by Al Qaeda. They like being pushed around by terrorists. They can expect more. Give a concession, more will be demanded. It’s called “appeasement”. Remember how WONDERFULLY it stopped all German aggression in the 1930s?
It *might * imply that Blair is doomed as well, for pretty much the same reasons. It more likely will mean a withdrawal of whatever forces Spain has in Iraq by the next government. It certainly will make the Bush claim to have a “coalition of the willing” be no longer credible to any but the diehards.
The bombing, whoever did it, pretty obviously was intended by its timing to bring the Aznar government down - but wasn’t that going to happen already?
Do you have a cite for Al Quaida winning the Spanish election?
Or even for any concessions being given/mooted?
Or is this one of those things where we get all mixed up between Al Quaida/Saddam Hussein/WMDs/downtrodden Iraqi people and forget which one we actually talking about??
And for future reference, you might want to be sure to preface your posts with some sort of thing about how you deplore terrorism. Otherwise you might come off as being pleased to see another thing that can be blamed on Bush, even if it means 200 deaths and to terrorists assaulting the democratic process.
This was simply a terrible choice by the Spanish electorate. They allowed the terrorists to ‘win’ and manipulate the election in a democracy. That has horrible implications for the future not just in Spain, but elsewhere.
For example, the odds of Al-Qaida attempting to mount a large attack in the United States just before the November election probably doubled today.
The criticism I heard (well, read) being levelled at Aznar in European news media mostly focused on a supposed attempt to manipulate the incident politically by calling it a Basque attack at first. Now, that’s in complete opposition to the fact that the Basque angle was a reasonable one to take, and that they corrected when evidence to the contrary was seen. But it was a perception of being crooked that brought in the catcalls, not a matter of wanting to appease the terrorists.
As for Britain, the problem I see is that Blair has a very strong ace in the hole: he belongs to the nominal anti-war party. If it hadn’t been for aisle-crossing by conservatives, he would have had the rug pulled out from under him already. So the anti-war voters are somewhat stuck with his party, and whether there’s enough strength to remove him from power internally I highly doubt. Without one of the minor parties becoming a real viable option, he’s likely in the clear.
If right-wing terrorists start blowing up buildings in states that legalize same-sex marriage, would you find it to be a reasonable response to vote out the elected officials responsible for antagonizing the fundamentalists, thus holding them responsible for their actions?
Its strange that the spaniards were about to re-elect Aznar’s party. Like americans the spaniards were taking the “War on Terror” as something that happens elsewhere ? That kills people in other countries and is not relevant ?
Its sad that they were pulled back to reality with a grisly attack. Americans should be wary that supporting leaders that casually disregard lives elsewhere can be deadly.
If a comprehensive coalition versus terrorism had been properly built up no single country would have been singled out like spain was for a terrorist attack. Its not a victory properly for AQ... but a weakness of the unilateralism of the so called "war on terror".
Assuming that this was an Al Qaeda operation and that there will be an attack on the US just before 11/4, the implications of that might be as negative for Bush as they were for Aznar. The remaining public rationale for his foreign policy is that he has made us “safer” (how you feelin’ about that lately, Sam?), but if that assertion also is disproven, we could be looking at a serious landslide. I don’t see how it would break in Bush’s favor; do any of you?
laigle, I was thinking of the next UK election *whenever * that is, not necessarily of a no-confidence vote now. Can Labour still win with Blair at the top, or has this latest event made it impossible unless they make him walk the plank first?
Al-Qaeda will see its manipulation of the Spanish election results as a precedent, just as it saw American weakness in Somalia as a green light to go ahead with 9/11.
I’d be very nervous getting on trains in the UK, Netherlands, Italy, Poland, etc. in the coming days, especially if elections are a few days away.
If I’m ObL, I’m pretty damn happy today.
Osama’s still not over the fact that 500 years ago, the Muslims lost power in Spain. That’s as much a reason for the attack as Spanish support in Iraq.
The notion that the Spanish government should be held even partially responsible for a terrorist attack against its civilians is obnoxious.
Just out of curiousity, if some terrorists blew up a train the U.S. because they didn’t like the imprisonment of Slobodan Milosevic, would you be putting the blame on Bill Clinton and Wesley Clark?
ElvisL1ves said:
If you think you can ever be safe from attacks like this, then you’d better think your position through again. There is NO ‘war on terror’ that is going to prevent some lunatic with a bomb strapped to his body from killing a room full of people.
What a war on terror can prevent is large scale organization of terrorists in a ‘safe region’ where they can train together and plan spectacular attacks, and it can prevent rogue states from funneling huge sums of money and weapons of mass destruction to them. That’s all I hope we can achieve. We will never be perfectly safe. But our society can survive the odd bombing that kills a few dozen people. Our society can not survive nuclear weapons detonating in New York and London, biological attacks, and radioactive material being spread in our water supplies and dusted on our cities.
Rashak Mani said:
Are you under the impression that Bin Laden WANTS Bush to win the election? Rather than somenoe willing to give him more breathing room and make ‘accomodations’? I think that’s a ridiculous viewpoint. For one thing, we have evidence that al-Qaida did everything in its power to kick Aznar’s government out of power. Wouldn’t they have wanted to keep him in power for the same reasons they want to keep Bush in power?
In this particular instance the victorious opposition happens to be the Socialist Party. As far as I’m concerned, it’s always a good thing when democratic socialists win a free and fair election, regardless of the issues they won on.
That said, there is of course the obvious danger that Britain’s government, currently dominated by the furthest-left major party they’ve got, Labour, will also be toppled by these events:
(For some reason when I hear the phrase “coalition of the willing” I imagine it’s the title of an extraordinarily highbrow porn flick . . . but that’s my problem.) Well, it’s an ill wind that blows no good. Blair might go down, but from what I understand of British politics, the Tories at this point have no compelling alternative to offer – we aren’t going to see anything like the Thatcher revolution. In fact, a new British election right now might produce the first Parliament in decades where there is no majority party and a coalition government is necessary. That would give the Liberal Democrats a whole new importance as they would be in a position to go into coalition with either Labour or the Conservatives, and in either case, charge a shift to proportional representation (the Holy Grail of LibDem politics) as the price of their participation. Which would be a very good thing for Britain, and would also make it possible for Labour’s left wing to split off and go it alone without committing electoral suicide.
Since I’m an American and I have not even visited Britain since 1979, I may have got some basic facts and assumptions wrong in the above paragraph. If so, I hope some Brit can set me straight.
I do think this will have some impact. I don’t think many Americans followed Spanish politics all that closely until a year ago, when Aznar suddenly emerged as a pillar of the “Coalition of the Willing”. In the State of the Union speech last January, Bush read off a list of countries that were part of his ‘coalition’ in Iraq. He did this to refute Democratic charges that Bush was a unilateralist and acting in Iraq all on his own. If by November that list has withered away, if Spain, and then Italy or Japan pulls out it will be an issue. If Blair’s government falls this year, it will definitely matter in the US election.
You beleive that Iraq was a WMD threat (it wasn’t)
That Iraq was a terrorist “safe zone” (it wasn’t)
The Spanish Govt.'s choice of siding with Bush had no effect on AQ bombing trains. (it did)
That Bush is reducing Terrorism (he isn’t)
That Kerry would be an “appeaser” (why would he be ?)
That the Spaniards were supporting Bush (they weren’t)
AQ obviously doesn't kill civilians for kicks (though Bush might think so). They clearly want to isolate the US. Spain's contribution to Iraq is more symbolic and political than military and irrelevant militarily. Once again the US is playing in the military field while Al Qaeda is playing in the political one.
Of course my premise is that AQ wants the US made to be a villain and isolated from the international community. They want arabs and muslims to hate the US. Its easier to hate an isolated country. Who do you think will engage better with other countries in the fight against terrorism ? Bush or Kerry ? Rummy and Cheney are ardent unilateralists.
Now if you think terrorism is something solvable with military action alone then I cannot argue reasonably with you. The US dominates militarily and clearly terrorism is an "assymetrical" method of fighting back. Bush is good for AQ because he is in a way isolating the US from other countries. He is playing the villain part for Arabs perfectly.
