The unexpected defeat of the Spanish Popular Party government has been attributed in part to the belief that by joining the US in the war in Iraq, Aznar raised Spain’s profile as a target for Al Qaeda ( which now seems most likely to have set the bomb)[1]. The same claim is being debated in Australia.
While there’s probably an element of truth in this, it misses the main point. Australia, Britain and other US allies were wrong to participate in the war in Iraq, not because it made us more prominent participants in the war on terrorism but because the Iraq war was irrelevant, and in important respects actively harmful, to the struggle against terrorism, represented most prominently by Al Qaeda.
fn1. This isn’t the only way in which the handling of the Madrid atrocity affected the outcome. The government’s rush to the judgement (seen as politically more favorable) that ETA was responsible was criticised by many, and contrasted with the refusal of the Socialist leadership to score political points.
The irrelevance of the Iraq war to the war on terrorism was evident to most observers even before it started. Even the Bush Administration, while it took every opportunity to insinuate that there were links between Saddam and Al Qaeda never made a categorical claim to that effect, by contrast with its clear assertions about WMDs.
The pursuit of irrelevant goals at the expense of urgent ones is harmful in itself. The Iraq venture has tied up much of the military resources of the US and its allies, which could have been used to follow through the initial victory over Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Instead that country has been left to relapse into warlordism and, in some areas, Taliban control. More importantly, the Iraq war dissipated the huge resources of goodwill and credibility that were generated by the September 11 attacks.
But there has also been more active damage. The Iraq war, and the triumphalist and anti-Islamic attitudes of many of its supporters, particularly in the United States, played directly into the hands of the Al Qaeda propaganda machine, ever eager to claim direct continuity between the Western world and the Crusaders. Combined with the failure to apply any serious pressure on Sharon to settle the Israel-Palestine dispute (intense pressure was applied to the other side, resulting, among other things in the creation of the new post of Prime Minister, with the objective of sidelining Arafat), the Iraq war policy has greatly assisted the terrorists in collecting new recruits[2].
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Worse still, the desire for war with Iraq has led the Bush Administration to make political decisions not to go after terrorists and their backers and arms suppliers where the result might be inconvenient for the coalition of the willing. This was pretty clearly the case in relation to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. In the case of Pakistan, the situation was already tricky enough, between nuclear proliferation, the weakness and dubiousness of the regime and the near-certainty that bin Laden was hiding somewhere in the provinces but the need to secure support for, or at least acquiescence in, war with Iraq has meant that, until recently, little has been done on either front. The causes of the Administration’s softness on Saudi Arabia are many and varied, but again, unwillingness to risk an open breach before the Iraq war was clearly important.
Finally, and most disgracefully of all, there is the case of Abu Musab Zarqawi, the terrorist most probably responsible for the Karbala atrocity a week or so ago. For well over a year after the S11 attacks, Zarqawi’s group Ansar al-Islam was operating from a base inside the Kurdish controlled zone in Iraq, which was also part of the no-fly zone. The Pentagon drew up numerous plans for attacks on Zarqawi, but they were all vetoed on political grounds, according the NBC story linked here. There are various hypotheses about the precise grounds, all highly discreditable, but the most plausible is that a watertight plan would have required co-operation between US air forces, and Kurdish ground forces. This would have been most unpalatable to the Turkish government, which was being courted, up to the last minute, as a partner for the Iraq war[2]. So nothing was done, and by the time the camp was attacked at the beginning of the war, Zarqawi and most of his followers were gone.
To sum up, the key element of the case against Blair, Aznar and Howard is not that they’ve stepped to the forefront of the war against terrorism when prudence would have dictated leaving the Americans to fight it by themselves. Rather it’s that they’ve aided and abetted the Bush administration in its decision to use the war against terrorism as a pretext for settling old and unrelated scores, and that by doing so they’ve increased the danger facing both their own citizens and everyone else.
fn2. It’s true that bin Laden doesn’t care about the Palestinian cause, or approve of secular nationalists like Arafat, but he still benefits from the general view that America is an agent of the oppression of the Palestinians
fn3. Regular commenter Sebastian Holsclaw contributed part of this explanation, though he may well not like the way I’ve used it.
{ 44 comments }
Sam 03.15.04 at 4:23 am
I have been making an abbreviated version of this argument in the comments sections of Tacitus and Drezner, but you have done a much better job of covering the key points. Yes, Iraq has diverted attention and resources away from the general fight against terrorism. When you really look at it, all that Bush, et al., bring to the job is the emotional (and ultimately ineffecitive) charge inspired by the chant for “war, war, war.” Their strategy is bankrupt and all they have left are slogans.
Sam 03.15.04 at 4:23 am
I have been making an abbreviated version of this argument in the comments sections of Tacitus and Drezner, but you have done a much better job of covering the key points. Yes, Iraq has diverted attention and resources away from the general fight against terrorism. When you really look at it, all that Bush, et al., bring to the job is the emotional (and ultimately ineffecitive) charge inspired by the chant for “war, war, war.” Their strategy is bankrupt and all they have left are slogans.
RSN 03.15.04 at 4:28 am
You’ve got it all wrong, as usually. The way to win the war on terror is to force democracy on the Arab world. Iraq was the first step.
Arab terrorism exists because there is no such thing as Arab democracy. Force change on their societies, and the war on terror will be won.
Hobbes 03.15.04 at 4:54 am
I’ve some quibbles about Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, but otherwise quite agree.
But I think it is interesting that Spanish voters feel (and Jack Straw’s palpable lie* suggests he fears British voters may feel) that it’s not in the interests of a small power to do a great power’s work for it. Even if that work needs doing, which, as you rightly argue, it didn’t.
*The bombing had nothing to do with Spain’s sending troops to Iraq.
bobthebellbuoy 03.15.04 at 5:05 am
How a strategy can be bankrupt is difficult to perceive, however, the actions by the US are the only actions anyone has taken. I suppose no action isnt bankrupt, just pathetic.
JR 03.15.04 at 5:19 am
I’m proud of this article because it is one of the few where the word ‘coward’ is not written next to ‘Spaniards’.
We wanted peace and clear information. Not bombs or war.
Shalom Beck 03.15.04 at 5:27 am
There are some arguments so spurious that only an OxBlogger can believe them.
Fortunately, “where the danger is, there is the saving power”:
“If the bombings were done by Al Qaeda, the 90% of the Spanish population that opposed the war in Iraq will feel that Aznar brought it on them and vote for the opposition. (rightly or wrongly, but it’s a fair calculation.)”
Somehow, I missed the point in the campaign where the Socialists took a harder line on terror, ETA or Al Qaeda, than did the now-outgoing Spanish government. So anybody who decided to vote Socialist after the bombings presumably expected that the Socialists would reverse the government’s Iraq policy and do less in the war on terror than the government was likely to do.
Jason McCullough 03.15.04 at 5:43 am
“So anybody who decided to vote Socialist after the bombings presumably expected that the Socialists would reverse the government’s Iraq policy and do less in the war on terror than the government was likely to do.”
Hypothetically, it could be because they expected the Socialist party not to get Spain involved in horribly botched wars based on lies, with no connection to terrorism.
BruceR 03.15.04 at 5:51 am
…or it could mean that the majority believed the Spanish government should put more effort into fighting terrorists and less into Iraqi adventurism… two mutually reinforcing propositions.
Hobbes 03.15.04 at 5:56 am
Shalom Beck should be able to see that the war against Iraq was a diversion from the war on terror. Saddam as of April was gravely weakened and sponsoring no offensive actions directed at Europe or the US. (Cf. neighbor Iran.) He was many nasty things, but not an Islamists fanatic.
Meanwhile the good guys in Afghanistan, despite Spain’s forces there–long may they stay– control little of the country outside Kabul. Osama remains at large there or in northern Pakistan, and apprenttly only this spring have we got round to serious attempts to capture him. I wonder why the delay?
Meanwhile, hostility to America in the Islamic world has reached new levels, something one supposes doesn’t hurt Osama’s recruiting efforts.
The crowd in Washington started a good war on terror and then turned into sappers of that war. Why is SB in league with them? Why is he supporting policies that increase the real dangers we confront? A little more attention to the national interest and less to chancy adventures in humanism is in order.
robbo 03.15.04 at 6:13 am
“Force change on their societies, and the war on terror will be won.” While you’re solving the world’s most intractable problems in single, hypersimplistic proclamations, don’t forget to add in a pony for me and another for yourself (https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001472.html).
“I suppose no action isnt bankrupt, just pathetic.” Was that the choice — (a) all-out pre-emptive war based on fabricated intelligence and backed by a coalition of nations whose citizens were almost uniformaly against the war, or (b) “no action”? That’s sadly what the pro-war argument has devolved into. And it’s pathetic.
Dan Simon 03.15.04 at 6:33 am
“The Iraq war, and the triumphalist and anti-Islamic attitudes of many of its supporters, particularly in the United States, played directly into the hands of the Al Qaeda propaganda machine, ever eager to claim direct continuity between the Western world and the Crusaders.”
This is pure, unadulterated crap. Those inclined to consider Americans as modern-day Crusaders hardly needed the excuse of the Iraq war to convince them–elaborate conspiracy theories to that effect (based largely on lies and fantasy–but what of that?) have been circulating the Middle East for decades. And the more open-minded in the region saw far more evidence for than against America’s benevolence emanating from the war’s aftermath.
But then, John, you yourself already recognize that this argument is pure, unadulterated crap. That’s why you write,
“Worse still, the desire for war with Iraq has led the Bush Administration to make political decisions not to go after terrorists and their backers and arms suppliers where the result might be inconvenient for the coalition of the willing. This was pretty clearly the case in relation to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.”
Now, whatever you meant by “to go after” Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, heavy-handed action against the custodian of the holiest sites of Islam, and against the pioneers of the Islamic bomb, can’t possibly be argued to win fewer converts to the “Americans as Crusaders” thesis than would deposing a secular dictator in Iraq. That’s why you’d never have uttered even a peep of complaint against the Bush administration’s softness on these states if you weren’t already aware that the whole idea of creating Al Qaeda converts by projecting Western strength in the Muslim world is just complete nonsense.
Osama bin Laden himself has made it abundantly clear that he and his followers predicate their campaign on American weakness, not American strength. And unless you believe that the correct approach to the War on Terror is abject capitulation (a position you already implicitly reject, to your credit), you cannot criticize the Iraq campaign for projecting American strength in the region.
Edward Hugh 03.15.04 at 6:43 am
“So anybody who decided to vote Socialist after the bombings presumably expected that the Socialists would reverse the government’s Iraq policy and do less in the war on terror than the government was likely to do.â€
I think this argument is ridiculous. Anyone who was actively ‘anti-war’ – the people carrying the ‘paz’ placards – was already going to vote PSOE before the bombing.
What changed: a lot of former PSOE voters who had been abstaining since the Gonzalez corruption scandals went back and voted. It was the high level of participation that gave PSOE the victory.
It is not plausible that all these people were suddenly looking for a radical and dramatic change in Spains external policy. Any who were will, in any event be disappointed. Rodriguez Sabbatero is totally pragmatic.
I think to understand what happened you need to go back to the Prestige and other similar issues. These voters were tired of *having the feeling* they were being lied to. In fact, while the PP definitely placed excessive emphasis on Eta (a mistake anyone could have made, eg I did too), there is no real evidence of any active attempt to mislead. What happened was that in the critical moment they reaped the whirlwind they had sown on previous occasions.
I don’t think there is any evidence whatsoever that most Spaniards want a ‘softer’ policy on terrorism. Quite the contrary, they want a more effective one. One which is less focused on scoring political points: either internally or externally.
I am surprised no-one here has mentioned Spain’s relations with Morocco. This is important. The difference between full blown OBL Al Qaeda, and North African Islamic Jihad may seem like an excessively subtle one to many, but it could be important.
Rather than the invasion of Iraq, you might like to think about the ‘re-invasion’ of Perejil. You might like to think about the daily tragedy of the ‘Pateros’ and how this is seen in Morocco. You might like to think about the impact of the anti Moroccan riots in El Ejido a couple of years ago, and how the Mosque was violated, the Koran torn up and urinated on. You might like to think about a lot of things.
Clearly the fanatics who carry out this and other atrocities are unlikely to be swayed one way or the other by such issues. Maybe, however, those young people who form the recruiting ground for the next generation of terrorists will be. We need an anti-terrorism policy which has two fronts.
robbo 03.15.04 at 8:02 am
“Osama bin Laden himself has made it abundantly clear that he and his followers predicate their campaign on American weakness, not American strength.”
America’s periodic shows of awesome military strength and our resolve to fight intensive wars overseas are unsustainable. They cost lots of money and the lives of some American soldiers, and eventually most Americans start having trouble understanding why we’re doing it. For better or worse, our political system has high rates of turnover built in, and our foreign policy priorities and policies change with the political winds. With this in mind, only a fool would openly challenge us during one of our macho, chest-beating phases. Now’s a great time for radical Islamists to lay low, regroup, bomb America’s allies, and behold what Osama hath wrought over the past three years.
Osama got us to spend hundreds of billions of dollars removing Saddam — a secular tyrant he despised — and this has cleared the way for the mullahs, clerics, and ayatollahs to take over. One more victory like that and we’re ruined, as the saying goes. George Bush has been reduced to near-incoherence, and seems to be more universally reviled than any US president in history. We’ve pissed off long-standing allies, we’ve embarrassed and imperiled the leaders who stood with us against Iraq, and our own leadership has been shown to be dishonest and/or thoroughly incompetent in its assessments of pre-war Iraq and the needs for post-war rebuilding. Bush is pushing a constitutional amendment against gay marriage that Osama himself would presumably support, and we’re cracking down on free speech and dissent like in the days of Joe McCarthy. We are ignoring our scientists about global warming and tying the hands of our environmental regulators. Our deficit is spiraling out of control just as the baby-boomers are about to hit retirement age. Why would Osama and his pals do anything now but sit around, sign up and indoctrinate new recruits, and watch America flounder and founder?
And what is the Right’s answer? We’ll just PROJECT MORE STRENGTH and FORCE MORE DEMOCRACY down their throats. We’ve seen the results of your approach and they’re not what you claim. You had your chance to do it your way and you totally blew it. You’re delusional and you’ll take America down with you trying vainly to prove that might makes right, that simple solutions are needed for complex problems. It’s painfully obvious that George Bush and his pals are not up to the job. It’s up to the centrists and leftists to stop them, and I believe we will do so — resoundingly — this November.
Andrew Boucher 03.15.04 at 8:15 am
No problem with most of this Monday-morning quarterbacking. Of course JQ could have done been than Bush. Couldn’t we all?
No problem with Spaniards voting Aznar out of office. 90% were against the war in Iraq, he got them into it, that’s their right.
No problem (after some reflection) with the Spanish vote changing sides after the atrocities. As other commenters have pointed out, here and elsewhere, it could be interpretted mainly as a mechanical result from greater voter participation. In the U.S. larger turnouts favor the Democrats, in Spain it favors the Socialists.
What I do have a problem with are the following:
(1) That Spanish voters were voting for peace. Peace unfortunately is not unilateral.
(2) That Aznar deserved to be punished for engaging Spain in Iraq, thereby bringing on the attacks. That sounds to me that there is a justification for Al Qaeda’s targeting mass carnage of civilians. There is not.
But I am especially against this facile denunciation of a terror tie between Iraq and Al Qaeda. That’s not the point. The Iraqi war is over and done with. The question is not, “*Was* there any connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq?” but, “How best to shape Iraq so that there *will be* no connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda?” Perhaps I am wrong, but it seems to me that a politically unstable Iraq will serve as a fertile recruiting ground for Al Qaeda. A politically stable Iraq, on the other hand, will lessen the hand of Al Qaeda. OK, so you can blame the Iraqi war for creating this instability, and you may well be right, but the question again is not whether to fight the war. It’s over. The question is, what to do from now on.
Should Spain withdraw its troops from Iraq *now*? I am perfectly willing to listen to arguments from the other side, but that seems to be to be a “cut and run” strategy which is deplored by most in the West. So, until I know better, I am against the Spanish Socialist position.
Jack 03.15.04 at 8:51 am
Maybe Aznar was just being punished for taking Spain into a war that the Spanish did not want. In a democracy that really ought to cause you problems no matter what the result of the war.
Chris Bertram 03.15.04 at 8:53 am
John,
I agree with you that the justification of the Iraq war as part of the “war and terror” didn’t and doesn’t hold up. And, as we now know, the WMD argument was not good either.
BUT my arguments with friends who supported the war didn’t focus largely on those questions but on another one, namely whether the objective badness of the Saddam Hussein regime (towards the Iraqi people mainly) justified its forcible removal from power by outsiders. I can’t say that those people were _irrational_ to give that factor more weight than I gave it (though I do think them mistaken). (And note that supporting the war for such reasons is perfectly compatible with a great deal of cynicism about the motives of those prosecuting the war.)
Was the Aznar government punished for siding with Bush? Did the Spanish people think that in doing so that government had exposed them to AQ terrorism? I don’t know the answer to those questions and the picture is considerably muddied by the fact that the voters had other reasons for rejecting Aznar including the government’s initial cynical attempt to point the finger of blame for the bombs in a way that would most suit their own agenda.
The thought that Aznar and Blair shouldn’t have sided with Bush because doing so exposed their people to a higher risk of terrorism is not one that I think worthy or respectable. If siding with Bush was the right thing to do but carried risks, then running those risks was probably justifiable and unavoidable. If it was right to oppose the war, then, again, the reasons for doing so largely pre-empt the invocation of the domestic risk considerations.
Sebastian Holsclaw 03.15.04 at 9:00 am
Re: your two major points about ‘distraction’. Saudi Arabia can’t be dealt with easily for one simple reason. Defender of the Holy Cities. If you don’t want a war with all of Islam you have to be really careful with Saudi Arabia.
You correctly identify the problem with Pakistan–nuclear weapons. So what do you want Bush to do?
You don’t mention that bin Laden says Spain is part of the caliphate that he wants to re-establish.
Think that might have something to do with the bombing?
Your focus on Israel is so classic that I can’t force myself to get drawn into it again. Suffice to say that the fact the US won’t let Arab countries slaughter all the Jews they can get their hands on, doesn’t strike me as a negotiable point in the war on terror. And if you think the Palestinians just want their own state, I refer you to Camp David 2000 under Clinton–the ‘international’ president. The offer which caused Arafat to start the intifada back up.
Your take on Iraq/Al-Qaeda borders on incoherent. Iraq and Al-Qaeda have absolutely nothing to do with each other, but Spain supporting the US against Iraq causes Al-Qaeda to bomb Spain. Really? How does that work exactly?
And I see that you think cooperating with Turkey was just for the Iraq war. Perhaps you might consider how useful Turkey is in the War on Terrorism aside from Iraq. Alienating them for an invasion of just Northern Iraq(which I do not believe for a second you would have supported had it actually been proposed) would have been incredibly stupid.
Regarding the democratic Middle East approach: “We’ve seen the results of your approach and they’re not what you claim.”
Have we now? Precisely how much time did you expect it would take to make any non-Israel Middle Eastern country democratic? And what precisely is your preffered method of dealing with Arab countries? Would you prefer that we support dictators who say they are on our side? Shall we install Middle Eastern Pinochets?
All whine, all the time. Just what I expect from the left.
Show me how we could better deal with terrorism. Is your only suggestion really that we let the Arab world destroy Israel? Is that all you have? Pathetic. Israel didn’t make Saddam gas his people. Israel didn’t cause Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to eject the Palestinians from their own countries. Israel didn’t cause Syria to shell a city to destroy Palestinian uprisings. Israel didn’t cause the disaster that is modern Egypt. Israel didn’t force Saudi idiots to push improperly dressed girls back into a burning school. Israel didn’t force Pakistan to threaten India.
Even you are forced to admit that Al-Qaeda isn’t that interested in Israel.
How do you want to deal with Al-Qaeda and other anti-Western, anti-modern groups like it. Don’t like Bush’s method? Give an outline of your own.
Put up. Or shut up.
yabonn 03.15.04 at 9:58 am
Hope you won’t mind the probably sloppy writing : the spanish victory was properly celebrated yesterday with a few bottles of tsing tao (go find anything else to buy a sunday evening in paris).
From my point of view, all the comments about “spaniards caving in to the terrorists” are a bit weird.
The first motive for the surprise election is the impression people had in spain to have been cheated (once more) by the government’s eta spin, not a stand about irak or terrorism.
Second the assumtion there is that terrorists were hoping to “soften” spain into leaving the aznar policies with that attack. So terrorists are very stupid, or spain now really ready to cave in to terrorism.
We know that the spontaneous reaction to harden yourself against it after an attack can be only conceived for courageous america, leader of the yaddahyaddah (what do these spaniards know about terrorism anyways?)
Last, the attack does points out a problem in spain. To fight terrorism, we need healthy democracies : the kind where a leader doesn’t do things against 90% of his people.
Again sorry for spelling. This morning, you’re all a bunch of blurry pixels anyways.
Matthew 03.15.04 at 10:10 am
“…its decision to use the war against terrorism as a pretext for settling old and unrelated scores…”
I think many people are afraid to comtemplate this truth, or refuse to believe it, simply because it seems so absurd: surely our governments wouldn’t have taken such a crazy, irresponsible course? There ~has to~ be a link!
Sadly, all this originates from the Bush administration…
John Quiggin 03.15.04 at 10:23 am
Chris, thanks for your comments. I agree that the way of framing the war that you mention is and was an important one – but I don’t think it can be assessed without considering the other costs (and putative benefits), which in turn depend on the environment in the region as a whole. The greatly increased importance of the struggle against terrorism after S11 raised the cost of removing Saddam.
james 03.15.04 at 1:53 pm
Surely the point is not that voting for a given party (the Socialists, the Democrats) hands a victory to the terrorists. We can’t give in to the insidious logic that says we should just vote the opposite way to how bin Laden would want us to.
The point is that for people to CHANGE their vote because of a terrorist attack three days before the election (and to change it in the way which the terrorists surely hoped to) is a disastrous message and precedent.
(I hope putting “change” in capitals doesn’t make me sound shrill – I just don’t know how to emphasise with italics or bold-type.)
Matt McIrvin 03.15.04 at 2:23 pm
But, James, that’s really the same reasoning on a shorter time scale: the change seems at least in part to have been a response to Aznar’s perceived dishonesty in the aftermath of the attacks.
George W. Bush’s approval rating soared through the roof right after the Sept. 11 attacks in part because he was perceived as responding wisely and eloquently in the immediate aftermath. (Whether that perception was true is a different issue, but I think this was the general opinion in the US at the time.)
Suppose that, instead, the attack had happened right before a presidential election, and that in the intervening days he had behaved in a manner widely perceived as stupid, and tried to pin blame in a manner contrary to evidence so as to maximize his electoral chances. Should voters have ignored this new information while deciding how to vote, just to avoid the perception of caving to terrorists? If so, does that mean that an attack right before an election should give the incumbent officials a free pass to do whatever they want without repercussions? And how is this worse than caving to terrorists– indeed, isn’t it just another way that terrorists can swing politics by killing people?
a different chris 03.15.04 at 2:37 pm
“is a disastrous message and precedent”
Why, exactly? Do you think terrorists would have stopped, er, “terrorizing” if the PP had won?
OBL would have said “Well, that’s it then, guess we’ll have to go legit and stand for election, now”???
MmmmmKay.
It’s a disastrous m&p for the Fighting Keyboarders, this whole democracy thing, but it doesn’t affect anything else except positively.
a different chris 03.15.04 at 2:48 pm
Look, you have to make one vote stand for a sum and difference over a large number of issues.
The electorate applies weighting factors to each issue and finally everybody “holds their nose and pulls the lever.”
Well, one of the first places you look at where your feelings may be split between the parties is foreign vs. domestic.
The bombings simply gave a sudden extra weight to foreign policy – and the output of the voter’s decision matrix changed accordingly.
Our right wing friends are so thrown off by Spain because they consider it a universal constant that the right wing “owns” foreign policy, at least as regards to security.
Well, true no longer. But it sure is easier to call the Spaniards “cowards” and bemoan the “message that terrorism works” than to contemplate this change in the zeitgeist.
See you in November.
Rajeev Advani 03.15.04 at 3:02 pm
John, you’ve elided all the major reasons for the Iraq war in favor of some silly “but are we safer NOW?” argument. The Iraq war was a long-term “drain the swamp” strategy that will work in the long-run. If reconstruction holds up, you’ll find it very difficult to call the war “irrelevant” with regard to containing terrorism. And your critique of the Bush administration is typical: chastising them for not going after the most precariously situated states — Saudi Arabia and Pakistan — yet criticizing their attempt to effect regime change in the one state that was ripe for it. That al Qaeda wasn’t closely affiliated with Iraq pre-war was never a reason for war loudly trumpeted by the Bush administration (I’m amazed how many on the left still believe this was a key Bush claim, when the administration denied strong connections pre-March 20th).
At any rate, al Qaeda IS NOW closely affiliated with Iraq — they’ve jumped aboard a sinking ship, and when that ship sinks so will its depraved crew. If I were a Spanish citizen, I would have spent more than a few siestas pondering that fact alone.
Finally, I agree that the Bush administration’s failure in dealing with Zarqawi is shameful, nearly criminal. But like most of your arguments in your post, it doesn’t pertain to the justice of the Iraq war itself. This is NOT the zero-sum game you’re making it out to be: Zarqawi could have been captured without abandoning the Iraq war. Unfortunately, both you and the Bush administration refuse to see it that way.
Anti-Honor 03.15.04 at 4:17 pm
Chris Bertram writes:
“The thought that Aznar and Blair shouldn’t have sided with Bush because doing so exposed their people to a higher risk of terrorism is not one that I think worthy or respectable. If siding with Bush was the right thing to do but carried risks, then running those risks was probably justifiable and unavoidable. If it was right to oppose the war, then, again, the reasons for doing so largely pre-empt the invocation of the domestic risk considerations.”
Sounds fine and noble. But doesn’t the RIGHT thing have partly to do with “tends to expose the populace to deadly attack”?
Britain’s contribution to the war effort and to the occupation have been substantial, not merely symbolic. But still, even in the British case, America could have done it alone. And now Britain is presumably more liable to attack than it would otherwise have been. Is it wicked of a foreign office to take the probability of attack into consideration when deciding policy?
Just Passingby 03.15.04 at 4:26 pm
The solution to terrorism is not as simple as some of you sees it. It is difficult to consider forced democracy as a solution when you remember that F.A.R in Germany, Brigatte Rosse in Italy, Action Directe in France, ETA in Spain are all terrorist organizations that flourished in democracies (remember Tim McVeigh too). I don’t see why a religious terrorist organization would be less efficient in a democracy, less prone to act (since, if we believe the US president, democracy is precisely what they hate more?).
And to those who think that, just because it is a left wing party and against the Iraq war, the PSOE will be weaker on terrorism, I’ll kindly remind that it has not shown any weakness in the past, and has even gone to the length of letting an illegal anti-terrorist death squad use the same methods of the terrorists to get rid of them (GAL was the name, I think).
james 03.15.04 at 4:28 pm
Matt,
I hope the turnaround was due to a percieved attempt at a politically motivated cover-up and not to the attack itself. And maybe if Aznar had come right out and said “Al Qaeda have hit us, and we’re not giving in” his party wouldn’t have lost.
But I fear the contrary – and I’m certain Al Qaeda think the opposite.
And as i tried to make clear, my point is not that incumbents should be supported in such circumstances, but that it is catastrophic that Al Qaeda appears to have effectively overthrown a government – that, by an act of terrorism before an electin, they managed to effectively bully Spain into choosing a less pro-American government.
Whether we would, a priori, prefer the Socialists or the PP to win is neither here nor there – it is, if you like, a procedural issue.
robbo 03.15.04 at 4:47 pm
Hi Sebastian,
“Precisely how much time did you expect it would take to make any non-Israel Middle Eastern country democratic?”
Five years, five months. Of course, real “democracy” means the people get to decide a lot of central things about their own government. Do you think our actions over there have inclined people to want a government that licks American boot? The only way it makes sense for us to spend our lives and billions on Iraq is if we succeed in installing a secular regime friendly to American interests. The story we’re asked to swallow is that this equals “democracy.” And if you think George Bush and crew believe their own party line about this you’re simply deluded.
“And what precisely is your preffered method of dealing with Arab countries?”
According to the UN charter and simple common sense. I would not spend hundreds of billions of my own dollars to undertake a clumsy bombing and occupation, get caught spying on members of the UN Security Counceil, falsify the reasons for my pre-emptive war, fail to understand that fighting a pre-emptive war on false grounds is incredibly de-stabilizing around the world, etc. etc.
Oh, are you asking me what, precisely, I would have done sitting in the Oval Office? Sorry, Sebastian, a man’s got to know his limits. I’m a biologist, not a statesman. With the division of labor in modern society, I pay taxes that go to pay hefty salaries to diplomats, military leaders, and politicians who specialize in that sort of thing. I expect them to devise solutions that make my great country safer, stronger, and more widely respected around the world. Is your point that unless I devise a superior plan that I should just shut up?
“Would you prefer that we support dictators who say they are on our side? Shall we install Middle Eastern Pinochets?”
We are the 800 pound gorilla of geopolitics. It behooves us to be much smarter than George Bush and his crew have shown themselves to be. I have not choice but to let the high-level diplomats and politicians decide how we will deal with the Middle East and its problems. Sometimes this means maintaining alliances with those we’d rather disassociate from. But can we just be smarter about it?
“All whine, all the time. Just what I expect from the left.”
George Bush has been an abject failure in just about every area of foreign and domestic policy. That’s why he has nothing to run on now except for the dead bodies of 9/11 and defense of heterosexual marriage. If you come up with something he’s done exceptionally well I suggest you let the RNC know about it pronto, so that they can put together an advertisement that lets people know. A lot of us see only incompetence and corruption in this administration, and our wining is only going to get louder and louder.
james 03.15.04 at 4:47 pm
a differant chris,
“Our right wing friends… See you in November.”
If I did have vote in US elections – which as a European I don’t – I would probably vote for Kerry, regardless of whether there was an attack or not.
Chris Bertram’s latest post touches on the tiresome tendency of American debate – which nonetheless evidently remains good enough to retain the interest of foreigners like him and me – to percieve matters through the partisan-electoral prism. Maybe Glenn Reynolds or Andrew Sullivan are using this to support Bush’s re-election – I don’t know.
But I would have thought that regardless of which side in an election you want to win, one would be somewhat squeamish at the thought of the result being determined by deliberate blackmail in the form of a terrorist attack.
Similarly one might support, say, France or Germany, in opposing the war in Iraq – but one wouldn’t like to think they were doing so in order to let others bear the burden of the terrorist threat, rather than on more principled grounds.
It’s disastrous because it gives a boost to the terrorists, it demonstrates their effectiveness to, and bolsters their standing among, their actual and potential supporters and it surely increases tremendously the chances of attacks against other countries in the days running up to their elections.
So, no, the results are not entirely positive, even if Bin Laden wouldn’t have surrendered if the election result had been uneffected, as your asinine rhetorical question has it.
Russell L. Carter 03.15.04 at 4:48 pm
“At any rate, al Qaeda IS NOW closely affiliated with Iraq — they’ve jumped aboard a sinking ship, and when that ship sinks so will its depraved crew. If I were a Spanish citizen, I would have spent more than a few siestas pondering that fact alone.”
First, it was “flypaper”. Now Iraq is a “sinking ship”, and presumably terrorists are less intelligent than rats. (Odd metaphor for a success scenario, when you think about it) Next it will be hopefully labelled a black hole, or maybe a strange attractor. But I suspect when the Spanish take their siestas, the fact that Madrid is not located in Iraq is one of the things they ponder.
Rajeev Advani 03.15.04 at 5:31 pm
They should certainly ponder the fact that al Qaeda is located in Iraq, as they’ve just been cruelly reminded that al Qaeda is located in Madrid.
The “sinking ship” analogy seems fine with me, your flopping attempt at caricature aside — al Qaeda has allied itself against democracy in Iraq, and that retrograde resistance isn’t going anywhere but to the bottom of the ocean. Now stop before this analogy gets too tortured.
Sebastian Holsclaw 03.15.04 at 5:54 pm
“Is your point that unless I devise a superior plan that I should just shut up?”
No. My point is that you should be able to sketch out the general outline of a broad concept of a typical approach for actions which would be more effective.
The closest you come is to suggest that Bush squanders foreign good will. But good-will TO DO WHAT? So far as I can see there wasn’t much will to make any major changes in the Middle East. Do you believe that leaving the Middle East relatively unchanged is the proper course? If so please say so. If not, please outline the general concepts of a broad course of action. I’m not asking for exact troop/police placements. I’m not asking for precise dollar figures. I’m asking for a general strategy. Keep in mind though, that sanctions, by example, have proven a particularly ineffective way of causing regime change or even regime softening and often make things worse. See Castro, Kim, and Mugabe if you don’t believe me.
yabonn 03.15.04 at 6:05 pm
james,
“It?s disastrous because it gives a boost to the terrorists, it demonstrates their effectiveness to, and bolsters their standing among, their actual and potential supporters”
Any act of terrorism has the same effect. Any of these is disastrous. How do we know al qaida had a choice for the date of this one?
How do we know al qaida expected to boost the ps and not the pp? Aznar flunked it because he lied, but i don’t see how you could have been sure that this terrorist attack would weaken “mr anti terrorism” himself -as you mention.
Imho, one can’t safely enter into the terrorist supposed motives, intentions etc if one want to keep them irrelevant to actual political life. What their strategies, desires are, are irrelevant to the democratic process : you can’t really critisize the spanish elections on these supposed motives.
So, wether spaniards are cowards, or there’s no problem with this election : the space for the “cowered or not, they objectively reinforce terrorists, boosting al qaida etc” critic seems rather slim to me.
Shalom Beck 03.15.04 at 6:25 pm
You folks all assume that the PSOE has the same view of the war on terror that John Kerry and Howard Dean do.
Nothing I have seen gives me any reason to believe that, and the one actual expert on Spanish politics (and ETA) I consulted, a Socialist himself, assures me that the switch to the PSOE was mtoivated by “Hate America/Appease Osama”
The big joke is that, as with the Roh victory in Korea, the PSOE is neither going to pull out of Iraq (that’s what those weasel words about the UN mean) nor alter the Spanish stance on the War on Terror.
P.S. Since the UN Security Council condemned ETA for the bombings, and the UN is the ffont of all international righteousness, does that mean that the PSOE is lying about Al Qaeda :>)
james 03.15.04 at 6:49 pm
yabonn,
It would seem unlikely that the bomb was three days before the election by accident. Yesterday’s Sunday Times:
“Osama Bin Laden…warned last October that Spain would be targeted for backing the war. A senior Al-Qaeda official later wrote on a website: ‘We must make maximum use of the proximity to the elections in Spain…Spain can stand a maximum of two or three attacks before they will withdraw from Iraq'”.
The report doesn’t give any more detail, so I don’t know how reliable it is.
When I heard of the bomb I was instantly skeptical of the government’s blaming ETA – because it seemed obvious to me that if it was Al-Qaeda that could seriously damage the government in the elections, what with 90% of the population hostile to the war in Iraq. I presume this was equally obvious to Al-Qaeda, even if Aznar could have changed the equation with a different reaction.
“Imho, one can’t safely enter into the terrorist supposed motives, intentions etc if one want to keep them irrelevant to actual political life. What their strategies, desires are, are irrelevant to the democratic process : you can’t really critisize the spanish elections on these supposed motives”
But my fear is that the Spanish people have done just that – they have reacted according to what they percieve the terrorists motives to be: to punish Spain for Iraq, and have in turn punished the government – which they weren’t going to do before, for all the war’s unpopularity.
Russell L. Carter 03.15.04 at 7:07 pm
“Now stop before this analogy gets too tortured.”
Oh we all love torturing analogies here. What happens if your take instead is evidence that Al Qaida is analagous to a submarine?
But seriously, and this is related to Sebastion’s complaints about what the strategy should be. I can’t understand why the architects of 9/11 should be presumed to be so stupid as to conduct the self-anhiliation of their movement by moving all significant resources to Iraq, then consuming all those resources in a game of asymmetrical warfare against the greatest concentration of American power in the region. Evidently they’re primarily interested in terror against unarmed masses of western civilians, and obviously the most cost-effective targets are not located in Iraq.
I’m also puzzled as to why Afghanistan did not suffice for the flypaper. One might think that that bit of usurpation (from OBL’s POV) would have pissed them off enough (plus home field advantage, smaller US force infrastructure).
At any rate, basing an antiterrorism strategy primarily on the hope that the enemy is operationally stupid seems unwise at best.
yabonn 03.15.04 at 7:50 pm
james,
Sure irak played a part. This kind of decision taken against a 90% in a democracy is quite exceptional : people in spain were hugely against this war.That and aznar’s daughter wedding, iirc, began the divorce between him and the spaniards.
But :
– the terrorist memos you quote give no information on what people in spain really think, and the way al qaeda sees these elections is irrelevant to the way we should see them.
– the image of the cowardly spaniard running to the urns (second higher particiption ever) to “appease” just after that bloody massacre is beyond ridiculous : disturbing.
After closely witnessing the kind of natural unanimous mobilisation there is after an attack of this type, the “appeasement” theory of some warbloggers implictly denies the spaniards any kind of conscience -i’d even say humanity. It’s disgusting.
Was there a big movement to “appease” after the 9/11? Is there a movement to “appease” in england after some ira bombing? It must be an olive oil, moustache or brown skin thing then.
Antoni Jaume 03.15.04 at 10:24 pm
Well, I’ve already put that at Calpundit, but it may be good to repeat it here, so let me say that in Spain Al Qa’ida was not a factor in the elections, ETA was. The PP had at the end of 2003 a dwindling expectation of votes. However a childish act of one of the leader of ERC, who tried to convince ETA to renounce terrorism like his party had achieved quite a few years ago with “Terra Lliure”, backfired since it did not achieve anything and worse, was publicized by the PP as an intent to defuse terrorist attack from Catalonia to te rest of Spain. That was a big gulp of air for the PP, whose electorate hates nationalists and tends to conflate then with terrorists. Even so the estimation of votes was once again in the direction of losing votes, nearly certainly the absolute majority the PP had enjoyed these last 4 years would not happen. And the PSOE had some remote possibility of a relative majority. That bore badly for ETA who gains when crispation rise, since it gives the backing of the Basques. So everyone expected an ETA attentate, and the detention of to militants with more than 500 kg (1100 pounds) of explosives pointed in that direction, in itself that detention was another boost for the PP. When the explosions happened, the first thought was “ETA did it again”, the foreign rumours pointing to AQ were discounted as wishful thinking. However it was thought that in such case the PP would lose some votes, and PP analysts seem to have agreed, so any link to AQ was downplayed, and even when they turned more solid, the government insisted to claim it was ETA. People got angry, very angry, at this shameless intent to manipulate.
DSW
W. Kiernan 03.15.04 at 10:45 pm
holsclaw sez: How do you want to deal with Al-Qaeda and other anti-Western, anti-modern groups like it. Don’t like Bush’s method? Give an outline of your own.
Sure. Keep in mind that I am but a humble construction worker, and not a Harvard’n’Yale educated genius like George W. Bush, so the possibility exists that there might be a few rough edges to my strategy; needless to say, after miraculously finding myself in the White House I’d seek information and advice from specialists. Now here’s what I would have done had I been President in 2001, in the broadest outline.
First thing first: ignore Iraq, utterly ignore Iraq, they’re no threat to the U.S.A. at all. Fire Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and everybody else associated with PNAC the very instant they suggest going after Iraq first. Fire them, cancel their pensions, fumigate their offices. Instead focus, focus, focus: go after Al Qaida. Put an all-out effort into it, don’t allow yourself to become distracted by any other projects while Zawahari and bin Laden remain un-hung.
Almost all the other governments of the world would willingly cooperate – Al Qaida threatens everybody – unless you go out of your way to piss them off. So don’t do that. I’m no diplomat but the U.S. government has plenty of diplomats; my policy would be to not undercut them and if my domestic campaign manager exposes the identity of any CIA agents hot on the WMD tip, put him in prison and throw away the key.
As far as those governments that won’t cooperate – as of 9/12/2001 there were three of them that I know of, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanistan – make it our longer term policy to isolate them and punish them for taking bin Laden’s side instead of ours.
After capturing, trying and hanging the bin Laden gang, go after the nuclear arms proliferators. Again, this means ignore Iraq, which has no nukes and which, as of 2001, can export nothing seriously threatening; focus on Pakistan and North Korea, which not only have atomic bombs, chemical/biological weapons and ballistic missile delivery systems, but which eagerly vend them out to one and all. Issue this ultimatum: so long as they refuse to allow international inspections and disarmament, if any nuclear weapons are detonated in the U.S.A. or in any of our allies, we will hold both Pakistan and North Korea equally as responsible as if it were their own Air Forces dropping the bombs, and we will retaliate immediately and massively, with the nuclear annihilation of Pakistan and North Korea as the result.
Now please tell me in what way my proposed anti-terrorism strategy is inferior to the chickens-with-heads-off strategy followed by the GWB White House these last two and a half years.
robbo 03.15.04 at 11:53 pm
No kidding, w. kiernan. You must be a super-genius to have figured out that America would have been far better off focusing on the actual terrorists who pulled off 9/11 and who were threatening our allies around the world.
Sebastian, I’ve had the impression from other threads that you’re a smart guy, so I have to wonder how it happens that you’re blindly carrying water for the likes of George Bush. Bush’s utter incompetence (at governing) and his administration’s disdain for democracy (in America, Venezuela, France, Germany, Haiti, etc., etc.) have only grown more obvious as time’s gone by. Are you simply frustrated with the slow pace of political and cultural changes effected by means other than full-scale war?
Sebastian Holsclaw 03.16.04 at 12:36 am
Whoa, there I’m not defending Bush. I’m saying that the current multi-lateral crap is purely magical handwaving. Say the magic words ‘multi-lateral’ and everything is fixed. Use the incantation and the magic occurs.
“Isolate and punish them” are you quite serious? Iraq 1991-2002 is the perfect illustration of how that doesn’t work. Iraq invaded Kuwait and threatened to control the oil of the world. How long did the will to contain him last outside of the US and UK? Less than 6 years. What did ‘the world community’ want to do after Saddam ceased allowing the inspectors to work in 1998? Nothing. They condemened Clinton (not Bush, Clinton) for bombing while they made absolutely no suggestions for action to get the inspectors back in. Clinton caved because he had no further support from the world community. As a result, the world community didn’t have the spine to force further inspections until Bush unilaterally put Marines at the doorstep.
Why would dealing with Pakistan or North Korea be any different Mr Kiernan? In fact, we know that dealing with North Korea wouldn’t be different. Half of the US time is spent convincing South Korea and Japan to not resume oil and food shipments to prop up one of the most vicious dictators currently alive–just as we did when he was building the nukes he has now.
“Issue this ultimatum: so long as they refuse to allow international inspections and disarmament, if any nuclear weapons are detonated in the U.S.A. or in any of our allies, we will hold both Pakistan and North Korea equally as responsible as if it were their own Air Forces dropping the bombs, and we will retaliate immediately and massively, with the nuclear annihilation of Pakistan and North Korea as the result.”
Yeah because the French love ultimatums. They barely signed off on ‘serious consequences’. This would be a great US policy. It doesn’t stand a chance as a multi-lateral policy.
“Almost all the other governments of the world would willingly cooperate – Al Qaida threatens everybody – unless you go out of your way to piss them off.”
If this were really true, why hasn’t the rest of the world gotten together to make their own solution? Clearly say France had a better idea they could shop it to the world and show us stupid Americans how to do it right. Couldn’t they? Why have they not done so?
In summary, I see precisely two suggestions for action, everything else is just chanting the words ‘multi-lateral’ without saying what the multi lateral coalition should do. You suggest the ultimatum route which can’t even get support in clear cases like North Korea so don’t even make me laugh aloud by suggesting it would work elsewhere.
You suggest ‘isolate and punish’. Seems to be working wonders for Mugabe. Worked pretty well against the Taliban too didn’t it? They were so scared of being isolated that they couldn’t even harbor bin Laden? North Korea gained nuclear weapons while being isolated. Saddam gassed Kurds while being isolated and punsished.
robbo 03.16.04 at 2:04 am
“Say the magic words ‘multi-lateral’ and everything is fixed.”
Actually, the idea is to use America’s unique military and economic strength, combined with our putative “commitment to democracy and human rights” to forge solutions and lead coalitions that other countries can’t or won’t. We’re the world’s undisputed superpower. What other country could even dream of spending several hundred BILLION dollars on the type of adventure we’re now embarked upon? ALL I’m saying is that we can be smart about it or stupid as a bag of melons, and we’ve been the latter. In spades. It pisses me off, I don’t trust those in charge, and I don’t understand why any other thinking person would.
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