Keith Devens .com

Well, you do know that bad will on the part of the spaniards towards Aznar and the Popular Party's been growing for quite a while now, far before late 2001. They aren't exactly overjoyed by some of the civil liberty restrictions that his government brought into law since they came to power.

Still, the socialists aren't much better and really just took advantage of the situation. The bombing was the last straw for the spanish people.

And of course the invasion had something to do with the "War on Terror": that's pretty much way the Three Musketeers made it out to be from the beginning. However, it was only made part of it by their calling it so. Whatever the merits of deposing Hussein, I actually think the al-Qaeda and the like were more than happy to see the back of him.

However, it was only made part of it by their calling it so.

I disagree strongly. I think Iraq is central to the long-term success of the WoT. AQ, whether they liked Hussein or not, would still rather have him in power as a Muslim leader than have America come and occupy the country to try to replace it with a democracy. You haven't been paying attention to the rhetoric coming from the Muslim world. Not to mention that Saddam was a major funder of Palestinian terror.

And, regardless of how the Spanish people weren't happy with the current gov't, they were expected to win until the attacks. It still remains that terrorists helped to topple the Spanish gov't and replace it with one much more friendly to itself. It's the worst possible message the Spanish people could have sent: "Terrorism worked". There's even a domain for it, much to my surprise: http://www.itworked.org/

The idea that they put a regime more friendly to themselves in power is ludicrous. Unless it's an Islamic theocracy, or any theocracy for that matter, which took power I can't even think of what you mean by "more friendly".

To these people any secular society is in opposition to everything they stand for, which is a world where Islam and Islamic states are top of the totem pole, not second and third world nations ruled over by despots supported with western money and western ammunition.

http://blogs.linux.ie/stuff/archives/m/200403#287

The idea that they put a regime more friendly to themselves in power is ludicrous. Unless it's an Islamic theocracy, or any theocracy for that matter, which took power I can't even think of what you mean by "more friendly".

It's real simple... pro-America vs. Anti-America (first thing Zapatero did was call Bush and Blair liars), and a state that's part of the coalition in Iraq vs. one that's going to pull out all of its troops. Zapatero even wants Bush to lose, and surely that's friendly to the terrorists. They replaced a pro-America regime with an anti-America regime, and that's only good for them. You set up a false dichotomy in your post by saying "Bin Laden didn't win, Aznar lost"... both happened.

I think it's short-sighted to think that the terrorists are so short-sighted that all they'd only be happy, even in the short term, if Spain turned into an Islamic theocracy. It also directly contradicts the quote I gave you above, as well as the patently obvious opinion the terrorists will have about their own success.

David Ellis has good thoughts

No, it's not simple. It's Pro-America/Pro-Bush, Pro-America/Anti-Bush. Some of you folks appear to have difficulty distinguishing one from the other these days, people in Europe don't hate America, they just loath Bush.

They loath the fact that the President of the United States can go on TV after an attack and call ETA (et-ah), the E.T.A. like he was some simpleton who uses his finger to read, and not the man occupying the most powerful office in the western hemisphere.

The Spanish ditched Aznar because when it counted he failed to protect them. this is the same man who had his daughters wedding in front of the Spanish equivalent of the Lincoln memorial at great expense to the state and he did so without shame. He invited his good friend Silvo Berlusconi, the billionaire president of Italy who's up on bribery & corruption charges and has ramrodded laws through government giving him immunity from prosecution. Aznar was despised, and after the bombing he and his party was seen as failures who right to the end were trying to cover up what happened.

We Irish bombed the hell out of the Brits for decades and not once did they kick out their government out after an attack, the Isreali's never have either. So are the Spanish just cowards? Or is it that a whole bunch of people who never planned to vote tossed out the party of a man who knew he was in so much trouble that he wasn't even seeking a third term?

Aznar blew it.

At the end of it all he didn't have the credibility required to pass the country onto his successor. Spain is unified in it's contempt for the terrorists but it was not unified in the case of handing the country back to the PP for another four years.

Talk of "Oh they've capitulated to the terrorists" is a load of hot air from people like Andrew Sullivan, or Rush Limbaugh who used this incident to attack the left from his radio pulpit, only to find that Aznar, a "hero" as he was described by some right wing columnists, was brought to task for eight years worth of garbage which had close to half of the country spitting when his name was mentioned in public.

I never argued that Aznar was a good guy, or that he even deserved to be re-elected. I only argued that this is a big win for the terrorists, which it is, and that this sends an extremely bad message, that terrorism works. Whether or not the terrorists actually swung the election in favor of the socialists, which is probable, it appears to the terrorists as if they helped determine the outcome of an election. That's an extremely bad precedent to set. The San Francisco Examiner says it pretty well (via Roger Simon):

Spain's affairs are its own, of course, and it can choose whatever course it sees fit. But that course will have effects well beyond Spanish borders, and we'd be surprised if terrorists would view such a retreat as anything but an unqualified victory and a model for how to successfully influence sovereign nations. This is true not just for foreign terrorists. Radical Basque separatists -- whose penchant for violence unfairly mars the reputation of the unique and warm Basque people -- are likely to get the same message.

The thing is simple: Aznar decision to go to war in Iraq was NOT what we wanted (im spanish). He is a fucking idiot. Bush is a fucking fascist. He is a narrow minded shit, who doesnt give a fuck about all the innocent people he is killing. He is worse than saddam hussein. Bush is a disgusting killer. Narrow-minded right wing fanatic, who only cares about the oil and all the millions he will have with this new "business opurtunities".
WERE ARE THE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION?????

WHO CARES ABOUT THE INNOCENT PEOPLE IN SPAIN, IRAQ, and THE TWIN TOWERS???

The people at the SFE haven't read their recent history.

Groups like ETA and France's Action Direct have been waging terrorist war against their own for decades. It has delivered them nothing.

Both also depend on a level of public support, butchery on the Madrid scale is the best way to ensure that evaporates. Indeed that was how I guessed that ETA wasn't behind the attack. A bunch of far left socialists don't move their agenda forward by butchering and maiming hundreds of ordinary working folk and their kids first thing in the morning.

These current attacks are not about winning any real kind of victory through guerilla warfare, it's not even about swapping out governments, though they'll take any victory people care to lay at their feet no matter how illusionary, it's about using media event attacks to make a statement to their target constituency, that of moderate Muslims.

It's a giant vicious PR job, a way of drawing attention to the terrorists ideas of how their own countries should be, not a way of taking down the west. What happened in Spain was a bunch of people switching votes because they felt that the current government wasn't working to make them safe. If they actually thought that the current government were up for job more people would have voted in their favour.

Moving on slightly, Islamic Terror is something we're going to have to live with for a long time to come. Any crank can be a terrorist, look at the guy putting anthrax into those letters and mailing them to people, but the way to deal with Islamic terrorists is to ensure that there isn't a receptive audience for their message.

Probably the worst thing the media, the press and the worlds governments have done is too build up Al Qaeda into this Bond villain style organisation. The reality is much more terrifying, Bin Laden doesn't give orders and have subordinates carry them out, you have these individual militant Islamic terrorist cells, all with their own particular brand of ideology, acting independently. But now they've started to use the name Al Qaeda like a brand name, like it was "Terror Inc." or something.

There will be more attacks, because there are more ideologues out there and they all have their own axe to grind. And yet when they strike, someone is going to mention Al Qaeda because it's more recognisable and sound byte friendly than the "Islamic army for the restoration of whatevertheheck.."

Burying the idea that Al Qaeda is some omnipresent terror organisation is a small task in the grand scale of things, but it's certainly going to be one of the most difficult to complete.

It is the the Republicans in America that are trying to spin the conservative loss as a victory for Al Queda. Al Queda doesn't care about elections, they want all westerners dead. When they start getting political there are no longer Al Quada, they'll be something else like Hezbolah.

Nobody in the media covers the fact that 90% of the Spanish people opposed sending troops to Iraq and supporting the US invasion. Maybe those people voted...

Al Queda doesn't care about elections, they want all westerners dead.

Of course they care about elections. That's what the quote above, as well as this piece is about:

Researchers with the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment who have specialised in digging up original al-Qaeda releases and interviews, told the NRK television channel they had discovered a document on an Arabic website last year outlining al-Qaeda strategies on how to force the United States and its allies to leave Iraq, and pointing to Spain as the "weakest link".

"It wasn't until yesterday when we were going through old material to find links to Spain that we understood what we were holding in our hands," project leader Brynjar Lia told NRK.

"We mainly had the impression that (the documents) referred to the situation in Iraq, but on closer examination we saw that they specifically refer to Spanish domestic politics and the elections," due on Sunday, he added.

According to the TV report, page 42 of the Arabic document reads: "We have to make use of the election to the maximum. The government at the most can cope with three attacks."

The document also reportedly predicts that the other partners in the US-led coalition would follow like "pieces of domino" if Spain were to withdraw from Iraq.

It seems clear one of their goals was to influence the elections in Spain, which they ostensibly did, since from what I understand the PP had a definitive lead in the polls days beforehand. You could argue about whether it's technically a "victory" for Al Qaeda (or whatever Islamic terrorist group) depending on whether the PP would have been elected had their not been an attack, but regardless, they certainly got the result they clearly wanted.

Ive been reading this blog a bit, and I CANNOT BELIEVE that there are guys like you, keith devens!! You are a Bush fan?????
Right wing fascist!!

Mark, I agree with you in a bunch of ways. Al Qaeda seems to have become an umbrella term for most Islamic terrorists outside of Israel. Usually some affiliation is claimed, and I don't know enough to say whether there actually is a real affiliation or whether it's just speculation. However, this underscores the focus of our war on terror, that it's not just a war against Al Qaeda, but against all (Islamic) terrorism (and necessarily, the states that harbour them).

I agree with you also that it was suspect that the attacks would have been carried out by ETA, since from everything I learned after the attacks that wouldn't be their typical MO, but was much more akin to Islamic terrorist attacks. One possibility I had considered was whether there was any collaboration between ETA and an Al Qaeda-like group, but I figured that was unlikely because ETA and AQ have very different goals.

Also, to quote you:

their involvement, or lack of, in Iraq isn't a pre-requisite [for being attacked].

I agree there too, which is why I think the Spanish decision to pull out of Iraq and hope the terrorists decide to attack someone else instead is short-sighted. And, when there are attacks in other western democracies before elections it will be clear that giving the appearance that the terrorists influenced the elections in Spain was short-sighted as well.

Ernesto, I wasn't going to respond to your ranting, but I'm curious... It strikes me that a lot of people just throw around the word fascist, and I wonder if they know what it means. Ernesto, please define fascist for me. No cheating, don't look it up first.

I agree with you that this is a victory for the terrorists.
However Spain has not surrendered to terrorism, they didn't want to be in Iraq in the fist place. The people of Spain didn't want to.
So the fundamental problem of why Spain has 'surrendered' to terrorists lies in the fact that they didn't want to participate in the first place with the war in Iraq.

By the way, the people of Spain are really furious that Aznar tried to conceal the truth of the attacks at least until after the elections. That's the primary reason why they voted against him and his party. He lied. People don't like to be lied against.
I think Aznar is still in great trouble for lying. There are gonna be investigations for it.

OPEN YOUR EYES
http://www.chomsky.info/articles.htm

That article just says how Al Queda could scare Spain out of Iraq and the rest of our allies would leave too. It says nothing about Al Queda caring about how the Spanish voted. The bombings were meant to scare Spain out or Iraq, they accomplished that.

Ernesto, you're a wacko. Go away.

Jason, "It says nothing about Al Queda caring about how the Spanish voted." Let me quote some of what I've quoted:

"We mainly had the impression that (the documents) referred to the situation in Iraq, but on closer examination we saw that they specifically refer to Spanish domestic politics and the elections," due on Sunday, he added.

and

"In order to force the Spanish government to withdraw from Iraq," one online tract read, "it is a must to exploit the coming general elections in Spain." It added that two to three attacks would ensure "the victory of the Socialist Party and the withdrawal of Spanish forces," the first domino in the collapse of the American-led coalition.

Martijn,

By the way, the people of Spain are really furious that Aznar tried to conceal the truth of the attacks at least until after the elections. That's the primary reason why they voted against him and his party. He lied. People don't like to be lied against.

That makes sense. It's a shame who they elected though.

So the fundamental problem of why Spain has 'surrendered' to terrorists lies in the fact that they didn't want to participate in the first place with the war in Iraq.

Good point... they were on the wrong side of that issue in the first place... this just brought it out, I suppose. It's a shame they've gotten rid of a leader with vision and replaced him with someone like Zapatero.

It's unfortunate... I keep seeing misguided stuff like this that has Spaniards blaming Aznar for the attack, and not Al Qaeda.

Well, enough with Ernesto's over-the-top ranting, and on to something somewhat more level-headed.

Would it make any difference if I pointed out that the PSOE were winning anyway? Aznar wasn't going up for a third term this time anyway, so the next President of Government would have been somebody else anyway. And yes, they did blame the PP---irrational though it may seem, the logic is that the attack was because Spain took part in the war, and the Government did so in the face of popular dissent. I mean, did you see the size of the protests? They were immense!

But regardless, Bush lost supporters, but through the same mechanisms that he's supposedly trying to bring to Iraq. So what? That the way republican democracy works. There's no need to bitch and moan
about it like some are. Maybe they're wrong, maybe they're right, but that's their business.

And Keith, whatever side you're on, the wrong side is always the other one. I think you need to play devil's advocate sometime, if only to get a handle on the other guy's thinking. You know, despite how it seems, some of us who disagree with you are right sometimes. Same goes here, sometimes you're right and the other's wrong. The wrong thing is to presume you've always got god on your side. We are, after all, flawed and limited beings.

Which reminds me, I've got a B5 quote to post in my blog. I'm off!

I figured this post from Josh Claybourn was worth linking to here.