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 Recent commentary from National Journal: Political Pulse: Bush's Vanished Capital (March 31, 2004) President Bush accumulated a vast supply of political capital after 9/11. But he spent it—all of it—on Iraq. By William Schneider. Legal Affairs: How Spain Could Bring Bush and Kerry Together (March 24, 2004) What happened in Spain is a disaster for the United States—so much so that George W. Bush and John Kerry need to issue a national-unity declaration. By Stuart Taylor Jr. Media: The Wallflower Knows (March 24, 2004) C-SPAN has downsized Washington, revealing it to be a city of mere people, not giants. By William Powers. Political Pulse: Loophole Advocacy (March 24, 2004) It looks as if many Democrats have changed their minds about wanting to get soft money out of politics. By William Schneider. Social Studies: In Geneva, the U.N.'s Successor May Be Testing Its Wings (March 24, 2004) Since 1996, a handful of foreign-policy wonks have been kicking around the idea of a "democracy caucus" at the U.N. Now it looks as if it might actually happen. By Jonathan Rauch. More from National Journal. |
Wealth of Nations 
Why the Terrorists in Madrid Hit Every Target
While the election results in Spain were dismaying, they shouldn't be used to accuse that nation of cowardice and appeasement. Spain voted as it did for more complicated reasons. by Clive Crook .... In remarks aimed at Spain's new government last week, the White House said, "Terrorists must not be allowed to think that they influence elections or that they influence policy. That would be a terrible message to send." So it would be, but the advice came a little late, certainly so far as the part about influencing elections goes. The atrocity in Madrid on March 11 not only influenced the Spanish poll, it actually overturned it and led to the removal of a conservative government that wanted a close alliance with the United States, and to the installation of a Socialist one that regards the occupation of Iraq as a "fiasco." This dismaying episode must count as one of the greatest triumphs ever achieved by a terrorist act. It is the result Al Qaeda's leaders dreamed of, and must certainly confirm them in the belief that savagery without limit is the way to advance their cause. With the assistance of Spain's voters, the bombers have not only overthrown a government, they have also, just as they hoped, applied intense political pressure to America's other beleaguered friends, notably Britain's Tony Blair. And if all of that were not enough to make them feel that blowing 190 innocent people to pieces was a good day's work, Spain's change of government has far-reaching long-term implications for Europe's project of political integration—implications that, again, will work to America's disadvantage. How's that for "influence"? Bad as all this undoubtedly is, it is wrong to accuse Spain, as many Americans are doing, of straightforward cowardice and appeasement. The election's outcome will do just as much harm as craven appeasement would have done, to be sure, but Spain voted as it did for slightly more complicated reasons. Remember that Spain, like Britain, is well accustomed to domestic terrorism, and appeasement has certainly not been the response of the Spanish electorate to that threat. For a short while immediately after the bombings, when most voters still suspected that Basque separatists were to blame, it seemed likely that the ruling People's Party would be re-elected by an even bigger margin than had been expected—because the government had previously taken a hard line on ETA, the Basque terror organization, and had been widely applauded for doing so. If Basque terrorists had been behind the outrage, there was every reason to think that the electorate would have rallied to the party that had opposed them most trenchantly. No question of any instinct to appease. Why was March 11 different? Presumably, some of the voters who switched sides after the attack in Madrid were indeed hoping that the country would be safer if it allied less closely with the United States. But polls suggest that a bigger proportion of the group that switched was mainly registering a protest, either against Spain's participation in the war against Saddam Hussein (a policy that a very large majority of Spanish voters had opposed throughout), or else against the government's apparent efforts to gain electoral advantage by blaming ETA for the atrocity even as evidence emerged that Islamic maniacs were the true perpetrators. Whether the outgoing government really is guilty on that charge, by the way, is still unclear. A lot of circumstantial evidence, including an ETA plot to bomb Madrid's railway system, foiled just days before, did point toward Basque extremists. But the government kept up its show of conviction that ETA was to blame a suspiciously long time, as evidence tending the other way—including the discovery of a tape of Koranic verses in a vehicle thought to have been used in the attack—came in. In any event, it is unfair to accuse Spain's voters of simple appeasement. Yet the outcome is no less disturbing or harmful, and not just for Spain but for everybody else as well. Whatever the background, whatever the political subtleties, terror has been rewarded, and how. Spain's new prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, says that the policy he has so far adopted toward Iraq is the one he has advocated throughout: He wants nothing to do with America's coalition, and he promises to bring Spain's soldiers home unless the United Nations passes a resolution that, in his view, sufficiently legitimizes the involvement of foreigners. This is indeed what he argued throughout the campaign, so Zapatero can no more be accused of yielding to threats of terror than can the electorate as a whole. Again, though, this does not alter the fact that his policy is woefully wrong. By now, one's view on whether the war was justified is somewhat beside the point. I still think it was justified, on balance, although as I have argued in previous columns, the failure to find weapons of mass destruction makes it, in hindsight, a much closer call. In addition, the failure to find WMD is also a grievous blow to the credibility of the White House and its dwindling band of friends abroad. The efforts of Bush and Blair to brush this failure aside carry no conviction at all. But even if you take the view that the war was a mistaken enterprise based on poor intelligence, it is possible to believe that America and its allies fought it in good faith, and that the end result might still be very much to the advantage of Iraqis and the world at large. Admittedly, Zapatero apparently believes that the war was fought in bad faith: He has accused George W. Bush and Tony Blair not of being mistaken but of lying to their voters. Yet even if you take that view, the case for making every effort to stabilize the country now that the war is over—the case for restoring security for Iraq's people and helping them, so far as possible, to create an exemplary Middle Eastern democracy—could hardly be stronger. Who can doubt that succeeding in this goal would be in the interests of the West in general, as well as very much in the interests of Iraq's own people? If nothing else, you might have expected the humanitarian case for staying in Iraq to have commended itself to Spain's new Socialist government. Can Zapatero seriously contend that the withdrawal of foreign forces, pending a new United Nations resolution, will make Iraqis safer or better off? The idea is ridiculous. And whatever Zapatero's instincts on that, he should anyway have counted the attack on Madrid as a strong argument in its own right for staying in the coalition. It is a terrible idea to reward terrorists, or even merely to ignore their threats (as Zapatero would claim he is doing) if ignoring them leads everybody, notably the terrorists themselves, to believe they are winning. Spain, you would think, has suffered enough homegrown terrorism to understand that. The terrorists' success in Spain is a big setback for the Bush administration—not because America needs Spain's military help (which has been modest), but because it has valued its ally's diplomatic support. Most likely, more setbacks are to come, all as a result of the atrocity in Madrid. The lesson for European governments supporting the administration despite the reluctance of their electorates is all too clear. Tony Blair, already suffering a loss of support in Britain, has been made even weaker, and he will need to be more cautious about standing alongside President Bush. The same goes for Poland's prime minister, Leszek Miller, another prominent "new Europe" ally of the United States. And of course, the possibility that Bush may lose in November is now being factored more carefully into their calculations. Looking further ahead, the implications of the Spanish bombs will continue to be felt. The defeat of Jose Maria Aznar's conservatives has abruptly shifted the balance of power in the European Union. Under Aznar, Spain was aligned with Britain (and with Poland, a Union member-in-waiting) as an opponent of deeper political integration. It is no coincidence that the euro-skeptic tendency in Europe correlates closely with attitudes toward the United States. It is not much of an oversimplification to say that the integrationist tendency, championed by France and Germany, is animated by instinctive anti-Americanism. What is a politically integrated European Union—a United States of Europe—actually for, if not to challenge and tame America's strength? Under Zapatero, Spain has already signaled its move to the integrationist camp. Feeling isolated all of a sudden, Poland is wavering as well. Efforts to write a new European constitution, which appeared to have collapsed not long ago, are suddenly under way again—all within days of the Madrid bombs. The plan on the table is implicitly a highly integrationist one. The dream of creating a united European entity that will be a thorn in America's side is looking once more as though it might come true. On March 11, the terrorists hit every target.
What do you think? Discuss this article in the Politics & Society conference of Post & Riposte. More from National Journal. More on politics and society in Atlantic Unbound and The Atlantic Monthly. Clive Crook is a columnist for National Journal and the deputy editor of The Economist. This column appears every week in National Journal, a weekly magazine covering politics and government published in Washington, D.C. For information on National Journal Group publications, see NationalJournal.com. Copyright © 2004 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved. | [an error occurred while processing this directive] | ||
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