Comments on: If there were an election tomorrow….

By: mc

mc — Wed, 17 Mar 2004 15:49:45 +0000

PS - Chris, why don’t you send your post, as is, as a letter to the Telegraph? They just have to publish it too. It would speak for a lot of people. There can’t be only ONE letter of extremely self-restrained disagreement with Steyn. Come on… Yours is still polite, but a lot more forceful. Just a suggestion…

By: mc

mc — Wed, 17 Mar 2004 15:46:26 +0000

By the way, there is one letter of response to the article from a Spanish person who is certainly being very, very, very polite to Steyn. Too much, in fact: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?menuId=1588&menuItemId=-1&view=SUMMARY&grid=P8&targetRule=0 (letter is “Aznar’s arrogance”)

By: mc

mc — Wed, 17 Mar 2004 15:38:57 +0000

Bravo, Chris. Nothing to add. Perfectly said, and you touched something that really disturbed me a lot in that kind of comments about the Spanish elections. They also keep missing the point that the difference between the PP and the Socialists was a mere 4%. I’ve read this pointed out everywhere but it just doesn’t sink in with the “victory for Al Qaeda” crowd.

By: Sigivald

Sigivald — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 23:26:01 +0000

Maurinsky: PP “should have lost” because the bombing happened? Does that indicate, then, that any party that did not prevent a bombing should lose an election? If so, doesn’t that imply that the way a party “deserves” to win is by preventing bombings… at any cost? The only way to stop such an attack is, well, martial law (unless you can think of some other way… I certainly can’t, and even martial law isn’t foolproof. But, realistically, I can’t think of any other way a government can come close to preventing a determined group from committing a successful attack at some point. The Israelis are damn close to martial law now, and they still can’t stop all attacks, and that’s with a much smaller country and lots of anti-terror training and experience!). Are you actually intending to suggest that any party that would not introduce martial law before a successful terrorist attack, to prevent it, deserves to lose an election? If not, what exactly are you trying to tell us about what party “deserves” to win or lose? (And to assert that Iraq had “nothing to do with the terrorist attacks on the US”, while possibly true (though possibly not true) is irrelevant; do you attempt to deny that Iraq did not support terrorists, even if not the ones that attacked the US? If so, are you going to provide evidence to counter the training facilities, harboring Abu Abbas and others, and paying off suicide bombers?)

By: Rajeev Advani

Rajeev Advani — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 23:06:09 +0000

GMT, citing double standards in the past will not damage the fact that the US is aligned against forces of reaction in the current conflict in Iraq. The US today is fighting for a modern Iraq; the resistance is fighting for a retrograde tyranny. It doesn’t take an Orwell to realize which side represents the liberal cause. Your inability to accept this reveals to me only your inflexibility—some liberals would rather cower behind eroding double standards than reluctantly side with the Bush administration.

By: maurinsky

maurinsky — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 22:55:18 +0000

There was absolutely a victory for terrorism in Madrid – that victory was that they were able to pull off a nefarious plan to bomb the train stations without any inteference from law enforcement of “homeland security” types. That indicates that the Aznar government failed to adequately protect their citizens. True that the real bad guy here is Al Qaida, again, but why was the tough on terror crowd in Iraq instead of taking down Al Qaida? Aznar should have lost because this bombing happened. It’s a victory for democracy because the people of Spain decisively chose a new direction. It’s also, unfortunately, a victory for terrorism because they know that they can still plan these kinds of attacks while our leaders are spending their resources rebuilding a country that had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks on the U.S.

By: GMT

GMT — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 22:51:00 +0000

WTB: I know that, frijolero, I know my tripe. Once had it at a Dim Sum joint, owing to the language barrier. Uck. I hate menudo. Can’t understand why something so vomitous is supposed to cure a hangover. If you want a place where the fact of a mess is justification for having made it in the first place, and where you don’t have to know beans about a country in order to tell them why they do what, try here: http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/corner.asp

By: wtb

wtb — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 22:27:54 +0000

GMT. Them was my comments. By the way, I’m a Texan, too! Gosh, what’ll I’ll do? Too dumb for Crooked Timber and too timid for Texas—guess I’ll have to console myself with my rhetorical gifts. Tripe? Yum! As we say in South Texas: ¡Me gusta mucho el menudo!

By: kevin

kevin — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 22:18:15 +0000

“Kevin, if a terrorist attack happens within a week of an election, and is accompanied by a public statement from those claiming responsibility which says that one of the goals of the attack was to punish a country for a particular policy decision, and a significant minority of the voters in that country switch sides so that that policy will be reversed, it’s appeasement. I don’t know why you’re wasting so much time and energy denying it. It was a rotten thing to have happened, and it’s going to make the struggle against al Qaeda harder, not easier. Just admit it.” No, because you are wrong. Sorry, but there it is. In the first place, as has been pointed out, the lies the PP told in the aftermath had much more to do with the swing in voter sentiment, and, as has already been pointed out, the PP was losing its lead rapidly before the attacks. More importantly, Spain hasn’t abandoned the fight against terrorism—it has decided to change tactics. Iraq is not the entirety of the war on terrorism—in fact, many believe it is not even connected to the war on terrorism. To pretend that deciding a certain tactic is not working equates to appeasement is silly and wrongheaded. Appeasement would be the release of the suspects; appeasement would be a refusal to cooperate in all areas of counter-terrorism; appeasement would be the removal of troops form Afghanistan. None of that has or is going to happen. Heck, they even state that they will keep troops in Iraq under certain circumstances. The war against terrorists will continue and Spain will continue to participate. If that’s appeasement, then we need another word for what wen ton in Munich. What is being argued here, in light of all that, is that its more important to try and read the terrorists minds and not do what they want then to make decisions based on what is in the best long term interest of the country, terrorist opinion be dammed. I do not see how that is an effective strategy, or healthy for democracy—and no one has even attempted to offer an explanation beyond repeating the word “appeasement” as if it was a magic spell, proof against all argument.

By: GMT

GMT — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 21:57:39 +0000

Kevin, if a terrorist attack happens within a week of an election, and is accompanied by a public statement from those claiming responsibility which says that one of the goals of the attack was to punish a country for a particular policy decision, and a significant minority of the voters in that country switch sides so that that policy will be reversed, it’s appeasement. Again with the uninformed causal chains. Please review upthread and see what you’ve missed. You might also consider that no one is required to “admit” what you can’t argue.

By: GMT

GMT — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 21:52:57 +0000

Well, Steve, “nonsense” notwithstanding you agree with me perfectly.

By: GMT

GMT — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 21:50:41 +0000

AQ’s errors? I’m sorry, I thought you meant a connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda BEFORE the US et al. invaded. Or at least you seem to think you have one. Unfortunately, AQ declaring war on all Christian countries attacking Muslim ones after the invasion of Iraq does not retroactively make the pre-war lying by western powers vanish, though I can see why you would need to hide it, given that you have no other argument to your credit. I’ve seen this kind of tripe all over right-blogistan, and it’s a shame to see it here, at least because the inmates of CT are not stupid enough to buy arguments that involve time travel and/or amnesia. Having actually read SunTzu, I’m not likely to make that mistake. Nor am I as easily frightened, it appears. If you have found a way to recast your timidity as a virtue I would not be surprised at all, given your rhetorical gifts. So, you said you had comments…?

By: Steve Carr

Steve Carr — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 21:49:41 +0000

As for GMT’s nonsense about the Cold War, every American president who was elected between 1948 and 1988 (with the possible exception of Carter) was explicitly and without apology a Cold Warrior. (That’s what makes Ann Coulter’s labeling of Democrats as treasonous so absurd.) So, no, no election was a victory for Communism, because all the candidates agreed that opposition to Communism was essential to American foreign policy.

By: Steve Carr

Steve Carr — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 21:43:45 +0000

Kevin, if a terrorist attack happens within a week of an election, and is accompanied by a public statement from those claiming responsibility which says that one of the goals of the attack was to punish a country for a particular policy decision, and a significant minority of the voters in that country switch sides so that that policy will be reversed, it’s appeasement. I don’t know why you’re wasting so much time and energy denying it. It was a rotten thing to have happened, and it’s going to make the struggle against al Qaeda harder, not easier. Just admit it.

By: wtb

wtb — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 21:34:44 +0000

GMT: sorry, make that three comments.