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March 19, 2004
Spanish Bombs
If you have access to Salon, I found this article very instructive in putting into perspective the terrorist event and subsequent political event that occurred last week in Spain. I don't know jack about Spain or its politics. Until the bombing(s), I don't think I even knew they were having an election. (I was hearing a lot more about Putin; of course, I'm not worried about his authoritarian streak or his growing consolidation of power, because George Bush has looked into his soul.)
So, I've been catching up, and trying to decide if the American right's response to the exercise of Spanish democracy merited a thought-out argument, or if it was such utter nonsense that it wasn't worth it. They've almost certainly moved on from this week's hit-and-run response to Spain's election, since their point is never to have a rational, sustainable position, but to simply win each news cycle and leave viewers with an inchoate sense of their "strength" and "virtue." But what the hey:
All the hand-wringing that the Spanish have "appeased" al-Qaeda with their vote is predicated on some highly debatable if not demonstrably false premises. First is that Spain's Popular Party was a beloved government set to win a comfortable victory until the bombs panicked everyone. The race was in a statistical dead heat. The bombs, and the government's dubious and criticized reaction, did awaken and motivate many voters who might've otherwise stayed home, so the results were surprisingly lopsided, but the PP was not cruising to victory. As the above article states, though Aznar was not the party's PM candidate this time, he was still its face, and he is an extremely polarizing figure in Spain, for reasons that include but go beyond his staunch support of Mr. Bush's war in the face of strong opposition.
Then comes the assumption that throwing out the government that didn't protect you from terrorists means you have surrendered to terrorists. This is ridiculous. The Spanish haven't cloaked their women in burlap and set all their binderies to printing Qurans. Spain's government got behind the war in Iraq. Spain just suffered the worst terrorist act in its history. The war in Iraq didn't stop terror in Spain. The Spanish want a government that will.
Mr. Bush is a very stupid man if he thinks Americans would be more generous. (Or maybe he'd be right--see, this is where living in America right now kinda creeps me out.) Regardless, he and his supporters hope we all buy the next assumption: That his is the only way to combat terrorism, and that if you do not support his way, you are surrendering to terrorists. His war on terror is now the only thing politically working for him, so he needs to keep us safe from terrorism but terrified of terrorism and convinced that if we fail to vote for him then the terrorists have already--
Which brings us to the faulty assumptions that a) We know what the terrorists want, b) The Spanish gave it to them, and c) They now know terrorism works.
What the terrorists want is for us infidels to die, and live in fear and chaos until we do. They don't care who our leaders are, although they may say they do until they give another reason for killing us. To the extent their agenda is rational and predictable, what the terrorists want is exactly what Mr. Bush wants to give them, because then World Holy War IV is on, motherfuckers! The sooner they can die making us die, the sooner they can get their 79 Black-Eyed Virgins in Paradise.
In the short term, Mr. Bush needs the same conditions to prevail as the terrorists do (though presumably with the actual attacks happening elsewhere). Absent these conditions, even his supporters admit that he has little argument for reelection. In the long term, of course, Mr. Bush wants to eradicate the terrorists, by killing, incarcerating, or controlling them with authoritarian governments that are friendly to the U.S. and have a veneer of democracy, or at least a lack of overt brutality, which will satisfy neutral observers. In other words, precisely the conditions that produced the terrorists. Unless you believe that the war in Iraq represents a dramatic sea change in U.S. policy.
Which brings us to what many have apparently forgotten is still an entirely open question: whether the war in Iraq is a logical part of any war on terror. Considered in light of the deep historical roots of the problem and America's allies in the region, reasonable people may differ. Time will tell whether the administration is sincere in it its new commitment to supporting difficult democracies rather than convenient authoritarians. For now, it is being charitable to say that Mr. Bush's war in Iraq was undertaken even though Saddam Hussein, for all his despicability, represented no imminent threat in either WMD or terrorist ties, and that it has been handled with a marked lack of knowledge of or respect for the people, history, and realities of the region. Hundreds of Americans and thousands of Iraqis are dead, and the war appears for now to have only fired more hatred, which the terrorists have been predictably quick to exploit. Just ask Spain.
One right-wing scribe declared that the Spanish election demonstrates "European decadence." What hypocrisy. For nearly a century, black oil greed and ideological paranoia have kept America in vile coitus with cheap, brutal gangsters, from the Middle East to Latin America. It doesn't make me an apologist for or supporter of the terrorists to note that the United States and its client states have often made justice and human rights secondary to political and economic expedience. That, more than anything else, is the cause of the bitterness and resentment that fuel terrorism. Those who are already terrorists are eager for us to keep it up, and drive more of their people into their religion of death. As for whether terrorism works, they already knew that it does. It works every time.
Posted by pk at March 19, 2004 02:22 PM
Comments
Middle East/global terrorism aside, did you hear Bush's speech to the National Association of Evangelicals? I heard it in it's entirety on the radio and it was chilling. They way christians have mobilized to support "The Passion of the Christ" is only a taste of the way they are going to mobilize in November. This campaign is going to be their holy war.
Posted by: Cristina at March 19, 2004 06:33 PM