If there were an election tomorrow….

There are many aspects of the Spanish vote which sadden me, most of all the atrocities which preceded it. Nonetheless a vote was held, a choice was made, now let’s respect that choice.

What saddens me about the reaction is the continued evidence that the West is splittling, country by country, person by person, into two. New events are tending to polarize rather than bringing people together. The Spanish bombings should have been a cause for greater solidarity; that has not been the result. Look at the world’s reaction to 9/11, and compare this to 3/11.

We have passion if not hysteria on both sides, and everyone thinks they’re entitled to punch the other guy in the nose. You understand it but you don’t condone it. That’s a difference which is to subtle for me. Violence is not justified because of someone else making comments you don’t like. Maybe you were just saying it playfully, to make a point that the Telegraph’s comments were out of bounds, which they were, especially given that some dead have not yet been buried. But the inability to even try to understand, or try to search for common ground, is disappearing. Instead we get comments which suggest that continued discussion is impossible, and the only solution is to hit the other guy down.

It is sad, it is depressing.

You can only say that because you don’t have a Tory government.

Chris, may I volunteer for the role of your fictional “Spanish person”? I have the credentials: I voted for Zapatero, though in an advance poll before the Madrid massacre, so I never had to reconsider my decision.

Not that I would have. As I made clear in a comment to an earlier thread, I am very glad we have dumped the PP and that the margin was clear. However, as I also commented earlier, this election victory has a left a bitter taste in my mouth. I think we should not have participated militarily in the Iraq misadventure (in fact our soldiers never went to fight), but pulling our troops out hastily, as Zapatero has promised, would be wrong both for moral and strategic reasons. We owe the Iraqis help in fixing what Saddam and the mismanaged war to oust him have broken. And — and! — the message it sends to the Islamists is that they can manipulate us through terrorism. The only person I would like to punch in the nose is the idiotic woman photographed carrying a photo of Blair, Bush and Aznar under the banner asking: “Can this picture have cost 200 deaths?” [http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ 040314/photos_ts/mdf496065]

As I said earlier, I am very glad that Zapatero won, but unless he makes it clear to the Islamists that our victory is not theirs, it will be a hollow, even dangerous, triumph.

It’s also nonsense to suggest that if one party is for something then opposing parties are automatically against it. Most politicians broadly agree on most issues. Being against terrorism is such an issue.

Declaring one’s party to be the only party of say “law and order” or wrapping oneself in the flag are almost invariably acts of bad faith.

And now Mark Steyn “knows” bin Laden is dead. Hmm. An article to cut out and keep, methinks.

Spain – The people of Spain decided to have their government ask the world if their might not be a better, more civilized way to handle the rise in terrorism.

The response from the Telegraph is that they are representative of the modern day Neville Chamberlain.

Clearly, if the right is correct and all Muslim countries equate to Hitler’s Germany, then they say let the killing begin. Why wait Europe, you weak, and dead horse, grab your gun (oops your don’t have any) and begin the Crusade. Finish the job your fore fathers started. Besides the world needs a good war for business….

Except we can’t wage that war just yet, because we don’t have enough of our own oil production like we did in WWII. We (US) need to keep prices high, so we can convince the American Public that drilling on our own turf to get our own supply is warranted in spite of the future environmental issues. The increased production from Iraq will flow to India and China to heat up their demand, allowing Global Corporations to make profits.

If John Kerry is elected he will not shirk from the process that GW started, American & Global Corporations cannot afford it and he knows it. In fact I will argue that it may be better for business that JK gets in, as he can placate all parties (Corporations, World Opinion and American Public). He will maintain status quo, but have the ability to blame Bush for tying his hands in order “to fix the mess he got us in”. Look, No President is going to give away an Oil Field, with its potential to drive the world’s economy, away. The Panama Canal sure, but 15% of the World’s reserves, HA. That’s why France, Germany and Russia were bitching, not anything else. If one looks at the situation, the further geographically one was from Iraq, the less bitching we heard from the people running the governments (England, Spain, America, …..

The people of Spain spoke in hope for the world, but the economic forces aligned against their desire for a peaceful resolution appears formidable.

I hadn’t clicked on the link, so didn’t realise you were back to knocking Steyn. Come on. Steyn is Steyn, Steyn is not…er, say Joseph Nye. If you read him, that’s what you get. If you buy a bottle of coke it shouldn’t be a surprise that it’s not full of chateauneuf something or other. And, remember, he didn’t kill those poor people. Some barbarians murder innocents at rush hour and now you’re reacting angrily to Steyn’s reaction to the Spanish reaction to that. Your eye is off the ball here.

What’s more, on this very blog, dsquared has argued that it was ok to oppose the Iraqi invasion because Saddam was killing a mere 2000 annually after 1991. What? That was acceptable use of deaths to push an argument but Steyn’s isn’t?

But saying that voters who vote differently to how you want them to vote are “dishonouring the dead”, before some of those dead are even buried, is not [fair game].

Chris, could you post a complete list of contexts in which certain people are not entitled to have opinions? Various members of the Crooked Timber team keep saying something of the sort; it appears to be house policy.

“Much of the solidarity with the US was illusionary”

Fortunately, Spain hasn’t even been granted the illusion of solidarity. The insults and epithets are being hurled at them even before the bodies have been buried. The so-called Right has skipped over the candle-lit processions, the black-edged condolence advertisements, the pop concerts at Ground Zero, the commemorative web sites, and gone straight to calling Spaniards yellow-bellied spineless terrorist appeasing traitors who deserve all they get.

It must be comforting for the Spaniards to know that they deserve the outpour of epithets too.

“Sadly it appears that many more people are going to lose their lives in horrific attacks, before there is greater concensus about the nature of the threat facing liberal states and the will to deal with it.”

Aznar, Bush, and Australian PM Howard are, according to certain trigger-happy segments of the blogosphere, the only ones who understand “the nature of the threat facing liberal states”, and the only ones with “the will to deal with it”.

The fact that all three have overseen the most spectacular terrorist attacks on their citizen in the past decades is, apparently, not a testimony to the bungling ineffectiveness of their methods (despite the hundreds of billions sunk into the Iraqi misadventure), but apparently something to be proud of, and behavior to be rewarded.

bq. Chris, could you post a complete list of contexts in which certain people are not entitled to have opinions. Various members of the Crooked Timber team keep saying something of the sort; it appears to be house policy.

He didn’t say anything about people not being entitled to have opinions. He talked about what a reasonable person might feel and be inclined to do to people who had those opinions without warrant, and expressed them. He didn’t even excuse the putative Spaniard’s putative behaviour. Just said he’d understand it.

Yikes, I just read David Brooks, and he makes Steyn look sane. Appeasement, cowardice, different political cultures, Europeans unwilling to stand up to terror. God he pisses me off. To follow up on an earlier thread, from long ago, Brooks has never written anything worth a goddamn, and he is a worthless piece of shit, who will say or do anything to promote his politics.

As a pro-Iraq-war conservative, I’ve been pretty bothered by the American Right’s insistence that this was a vote for appeasement. Maybe is was, maybe it wasn’t, but I sure can’t get into the heads of Spanish voters, so I can’t possibly know. And calling someone a “coward” or “dishonorable” because of his political choices is stupid and destructive.

But the Left’s response to the Right’s distasteful complaining, including the CT response, has been inadequate. What matters most is not why Spain voted as it did, or who has the right to interpret and criticize the result, but rather, how al-Qaeda will interpret the result.

If the bombers wanted to influence the election, and if they think that they did, in fact, influence it, that is extremely bad news. For that matter, it is extremely bad news if the bombers have a political preference in Spanish (or American) elections. All civilized politicians really should be equally (and publicly) committed to destroying thugs and barbarians like these.

All the carefully-developed arguments about the glories of the socialists or the perfidity of the PP won’t matter if the result is more election-eve bombs killing more innocent people.

If al Qaeda has the capability to plant bombs and kill hundreds of people, they’re going to do it however they interpret the Spanish election. They might plant their bombs before elections if they think they can influence them, or they might plant their bombs where there are large crowds on some special date, or they might choose some big symbolic target again, like the Pentagon or the WTC. The point is to stop them, not to worry about how they might read election results except to the extent that understanding what they think might give clues on what their next target is going to be.

William, you’re arguing a different point. I wasn’t discussing how a given voter should vote, I was just saying that if AQ’s morale goes up, that’s bad for the civilized world. If that morale boost is a result of misunderstanding on their part, that doesn’t really make much difference.

Robert, when terrorists succeed in killing hundreds of people and maimimg thousands, they bloody well know that they will be influencing events greatly. That’s the whole damn point of detonating 300 pounds of high explosives in crowded public places. I think the fact that they succeeded in causing such carnage is in and of itself a great morale booster for al-Qaeda.

Semtex is not a scalpel-like tool to be used by terrorists to subtly influence policy. It’s a blunt instrument, the object of which is to cause as much terror as possible. Each act of terror is more or less an end in itself. Succesfully detonating their explosives was their goal, not tipping votes one way or another.

There is much rejoicing today in the al-Qaeda street at the fact that their bombs went off, and if the PP had won that election their elation at their succesful attack would not have been any less. The electoral outcome is an irrelevancy: the atmosphere of fear and shock is what matters. That the Socialists won is of interest only to hysterical right-wingers and war-hawks, who imagine that their frightened bleatings trump Spanish sorrow.

Like that “(c)”…

The last poll on the 8th gave the PP an 4% lead, lower than earlier in the campaign. This had a 3% margin of error. Six days later the election gave the PS a 4% or 5% lead. Six days is a long time in elections. The day before the UK 1992 election 4/5 polls gave Labour the lead, the next day the Tories won by about 6-7%. Nothing had changed.

“The comment in some papers that Al Quaeda has succeeded in dictating a result in a democracy is really objectionable ..”

“But I’d still probably vote Labour. I certainly wouldn’t take kindly to commentators from other countries — themselves basically ignorant of my country’s politics and history — telling me that my task, in casting my vote, is to “send a message” to Osama bin Laden or anyone else.”

What is this talk of tasks or objectionable or dishonouring the dead? Talk of facts.

Fact 1: The PP was leading by a noticeable margin before the bombs.

Fact 2: Al Qaeda has publically and repeatedly criticized Spanish involvement in Iraq.

Fact 3: Al Qaeda set some bombs and killed about 200 people.

Fact 4: This changed the most probable result of the election such that it allowed to win a party who promises to engage in a foreign policy which is the same policy which Al Qaeda desires. (Please note I do not say “aligns itself with Al Qaeda’s desires” or “changes it view to match Al Qaeda’s”).

Fact 5: This specific result was Al Qaeda’s plan .

So without disparaging the intentions of the Spanish electorate, I can still easily say that they have handed Al Qaeda a large victory.

For the first time Al Qaeda can credibly claim (notice I don’t say unimpeachably prove I say credibly claim) to have toppled a Western government and influenced an election through murder to successfully gain a desired foreign policy change. They say that they did this with ‘only’ 200 murders. This will be used by them to show others in the Middle East that they are strong, and that the West is easily cowed. This will tend to strongly encourage those who might lean toward them and strongly discourage those who might lean against them.

The position that the ‘PP blamed the ETA’ for a day and a half when it seemed like the most obvious conclusion to Europeans (a suggestion to the contrary subjected many warbloggers to intense ridicule in the first day after the bombing) is not going to mitigate the above facts one whit in the Middle East–where it really matters. Especially when the PP government did nothing to hide the evidence to the contrary. I knew about the van with Muslim tracts and explosives within hours of the actual bombing. And I live half way across the world.

William writes: “I think you should be voting for the party whose reaction to the bombers you most agree with.” Well, if you change your vote to vote for the party whose reaction is the one that the terrorists want, and do so in the hope that the terrorists won’t bomb you again, then I think that’s pretty much appeasment. And it seems clear — not just from the polls, but from myriad comments from Spanish voters in the press — that a significant minority of Spanish voters did just that. Arguing that the electoral outcome is an “irrelevancy” is simply whistling past the graveyard.

This is especially true because bin Laden has quite explicitly used previous examples of Western weakness in the face of violence — most notably the decision to pull U.S. troops out of Somalia after Mogadishu — as a recruiting tool, treating them as evidence that if the radical Islamists stay the course, their victory is assured.

Al Qaeda is not, as bp seems to think, made up of nihilists. Terror is not an end in and of itself. It’s a tool that’s being used to bring about the return of the Caliphate. They want to win, and the more victories they do win, the easier it becomes for them to carry on the struggle and, just as important, the easier it becomes for them to recruit new members. Spanish voters who switched their votes –and only them — handed al Qaeda a victory. I don’t think they’re in a position to be punching anyone.

Were I voting in Spain’s election, especially after the bombing, I’d vote for the politicians who’d yank Spanish soldiers out of Iraq, where Al Qaida ain’t, and ship them over to Afghanistan to team up with the multi-national force there, where they might get a chance to lay hands on some genuine Al Qaida guys and kill them.

And I don’t give a damn about influencing the morale or what-have-you inside the heads of the Al Qaida fanatics one way or another. All I care about is influencing their bodies with flying lead, high explosives and napalm.

Focus. The way to beat Al Qaida is to go after Al Qaida, not to attack a bunch of far more easily locatable guys with more or less the same skin color and the same religion who have nothing to do with Al Qaida. I know that’s a highly complicated concept and possibly over-subtle, but that would be my plan, and I’m sticking with it.

“It’s a tool that’s being used to bring about the return of the Caliphate”

This is one of the most stupid ideas floating around in the blogosphere at the moment. It’s a concise sentence, easily mouthed, but means absolutely *nothing.*

“Bring back the return of the Caliphate”. How? By exploding bombs in public places until Spaniards import some Moroccan and elect him Caliph?

John Sheehy wrote:

Talking about other countries’ elections is fair game; plenty of non-Americans ignorant of US politics and history have banged on about Bush stealing the 2000 US election to the present day.

I agree, it is disingenuous to suddenly decry non-Spaniard comments about the Spanish election and its implications while non-Americans have been free to make their own commentary about American politics.

That being said, I think it would be a mistake to jump in right away and assume the reason for the outcome and why the apparent shift until one has a better understanding of the facts. Some have suggested that the pre-election polls were misleading as there were an awful lot of new voters who may have shifted the results. There are also undoubtedly quite a lot of domestic issues of which non-Spaniards may not as aware that undoubtedly sway elections.

However I do think it is safe to say that the reversal of Spain’s policy in Iraq (while its substantive contribution seems minor) will be used as a propaganda coup by Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups and possibly inspire other attacks on American allies in the hopes of changing their policies as well. It does not mean that the attacks in Spain were necessarily what did that, but that I have no doubt that it will be seen that way.

However I do think it is safe to say that the reversal of Spain’s policy in Iraq (while its substantive contribution seems minor) will be used as a propaganda coup by Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups and possibly inspire other attacks on American allies in the hopes of changing their policies as well.
If we assume that al-Qaeda and its sympathizers are as ignorant of the Spanish Socialist party’s longstanding demand for such a policy reversal as is the American right, then this seems reasonable.

But while Iraq has been a strategic victory for al-Qaeda (more practically significant than the American strategy of appeasement in moving its forces from Saudi Arabia), and while al-Qaeda did declare war on all Christian nations invading any Islamic one, if al-Qaeda’s leaders are slightly more intelligent, they should worry about a western power that is not distracted from terrorism by a decade-old American plan to break OPEC, since this may spell the beginning of their enemies’ period of bungling.

should read: spell the beginning of the end of their enemies’ bungling.

“If we assume that al-Qaeda and its sympathizers are as ignorant of the Spanish Socialist party’s longstanding demand for such a policy reversal as is the American right, then this seems reasonable.”

Why would we assume that? Al Qaeda knew full well of the Socialist party’s desire for such a policy reversal. That is precisely why their win in response to the bombings is a great victory for Al Qaeda. The murders contributed to a situation where a party adverse to Al Qaeda’s stated foreign policy in Iraq was replaced by one in line with Al Qaeda’s state foreign policy in Iraq. The longstanding position of the Socialist party isn’t the point. The point is that Al Qaeda set off bombs, killed 200 people and can credibly claim to have changed the election outcome from one that supported the US into one that does not support the US.

GMT, how is my fact 1 not a fact? Do you dispute that the PP was polling significantly ahead prior to the bombings? On what basis? What is speculative about 4? Are you suggesting that the bombings did not change the most probable outcome of the votes? Are you suggesting that the most probable outcome was a Socialist win if there had been no bombings?

If al qaeda were to attack the US before the elections, I’m wiliing to bet that Bush would stand a much greater chance of victory. (And I think there is a strong case to be made that this would suit al-qaeda well.)

Will we then hear voices denouncing the result?

No, because this only works one way. A result that accurately represents the will of the electorate, with respect to the war on Iraq, is caving in. An illegal conflict to further imperialism is not.

After all, we are fighting for democracy. Not so that Spanish foreign policy should reflect, as has been consistently polled, the overwhelming will of the Spanish people.

I have no idea why I used the word ascern there…

Oops, left out:
Yes, your fact #1 is not a fact. PP was not polling significantly ahead of the competition 8 days before the election, if by “significantly,” you mean statistically significantly. PPs numbers had been trending downward for weeks, as a matter of fact.
Therefore, before the bombings, the parties’ numbers met, with PP on its way down.
Changes the picture, doesn’t it?
I think the further context, which I have provided above, answers your questions about Fact #4.

“Antoni Jaume)And do never forget that AQ was fueled by the USA to go against the SU, so yes terrorism works, and the USA has been its greater sponsor since the end of the wars in Europe in 1945.

(Thorley Winston)Really? Evidence please.”

to begin:

“…In 1985, President Ronald Reagan received a group of bearded men… They were very ferocious-looking bearded men with turbans, looking like they came from another century. President Reagan received them in the White house. After receiving them he spoke to the press. He pointed towards them…and said, These are the moral equivalent of America’s founding fathers. These were the Afghan mujahideen…”

read the rest at :

http://www.meaningfulliving.com/terrorism_theirs_and_ours.htm

DSW

“Kevin’s bizarre argument that it would have been sniveling cowardice for people not to change their vote —that is, it would have been cowardly for them to vote the way they intended to before the bombing — gets this point exactly wrong.”

Well, no. Ignoring for the moment that you are resting your argument on one interview, not a solid look at the reasons behind the vote, I see no practical way you can say “you shouldn’t let al-Queda attacks affect your vote.” mean anything other than “You shouldn’t take into consideration the effects of a terrorist attack, even if they are enough to push you over the edge to belief that the government is doing X incorrectly.” You are telling people that its more important to prevent a short term propaganda gain for al-Queda (and the arguments about moral are off base. They are fanatics. Fanatics have moral out the wazoo) than to vote for what they think is in the long term interest of the country. You have the equation exactly backward.

And exactly how far out does a terrorist attack have to happen before I can take it into consideration? If this had happened a month ago would it have been all right for the Spanish to take it into account? Or a week ago? or last year? At what point does it stop being about manipulated by terrorists and instead becomes a statement about the effectiveness of the government’s anti-terrorist policies?

The debate over whether the election in Spain was influenced more by pre-existing internal political dynamics or by external events (i.e. the bombing) is, in the short run, immaterial. It doesn’t matter if Spanish voters chose their prime minister on the basis of anger, fear or serene reflection upon each candidate’s merits. The terrorists won’t stop to consider these nuances. They’re already celebrating.

That’s not to say it’s inappropriate for us to analyze the long term consequences of this election. Indeed, we must do so in order to understand how it will affect the war on terror. (Yes, it is a war.) And, of course, we’re all glad that Franco’s gone and that Spanish voters have the opportunity to vote with their conscience. But it’s silly to pretend that the terrorists aren’t delighted with the result.

Winston: you might check into the provision of arms to Iranian terrorists, to help fund Latin American death squads.

Just a suggestion.

WTB: while I have pointed out why this isn’t necessarily a victory for AQ from the standpoint of their own political calculus, about which I can only speculate, I don’t doubt for a moment that this episode is at this moment becoming part of one of AQ nauseatingly juvenile recruiting/cheerleading videos. So what? Which war are we fighting? A war of .mpegs?
I just don’t think that you can go through life, much less a war (and you stress that it is a war) worrying that the enemy might find something to smile about. That’s not my idea of confidence, strength, or principle. Aznar failed against terrorism, in more ways than one. If AQ thinks Spain’s possible withdrawal (NATO option pending) from Iraq is their victory, those of us who never bought into the well financed conflation of those two wars are understandably optimistic.

As someone has observed elsewhere, how many times did the US govt. change hands during the Cold War? Was the Cold War an issue in those elections? Of course. Was any election a victory for Communism? If so, why did they lose?

“Just because I’m don’t know the exact number of days you typically need to add to this in order to break the chain doesn’t mean that I can’t be sure that 3 days and 1 day are well within the range. ”

Yes and no — you need to be able to give me some idea of when I am a voter and when I am an appeaser, otherwise your distinction doesn’t have a lot of meaning. At some point, people do agree on what is bald and what is covered with hair. It’s a secondary point, but since I am already hearing things like Bin laden for Kerry at NRO, its important that we get some clarification on this issue.

“changing the foreign policy such that it is in line with Al Qaeda’s wishes (even though the Socialists did not have to change their own position to do so) smacks of appeasement.”

Not really, not unless you really want it to. The Spanish people were already opposed to the policies of th PP in this regard, it just hadn’t become the premier issue because their hadn’t been a large cost. Now there was, and people no longer felt that they could support a failed and failing policy. Doing what you wanted to do anyway is not really appeasement — particulalry considering that the Spanish route is arguably more effective and tougher on the terrorists than the US route.

And all of this avoids the larger question: why should we care more about the short term propaganda victories rather than the long term consequences? And that’s what people seem to be arguing here: it looks like appeasement, so al-Queda wins, so the Spanish should not have done what they thought was in their best long term interest with regards to terrorism. I say again: that way is giving the terrorists far too much control over our institutions and decisions.

it is not possible to hold to a progressive view of politics and wish either that that country’s liberation by British and American forces had never taken place, or that western nations should now abandon a country assailed by their own mortal enemies.
Nor is it possible to ignore the pathetic hypocrisy of using the brutality Saddam’s regime (again: remember the baby incubator story? remember the US about-face on Amnesty International? remember we were going to “restore democracy” to a Kuwait that didn’t have one when invaded? etc), which the US supported to the tune of billions of dollars (even after Halabja), as the reason for removing him from power at the cost of still more thousands of Iraqi lives, or to ignore that the plan to do so was perfectly public for over a decade and had nothing to do with either wmd or human rights, or that the continuing presense of US forces draws more killers there who have no stake in a stable Iraq, as our own “flypaper strategy” makes patent.
Advani’s quote misrepresents both the present and the past of Iraq and relations with that nation, and progressives are not the ones shoving history down the memory hole in service of the present, failed policy.

Confused,

When AQ was flushed out of Afghanistan they went to Iran, Iraq and Pakistan, Asia and Africa.

We have worked hard with Pakistan and Indonesia. Getting started with Algeria. Can’t do much with Iran, yet. Hoping the Iranians will take care of it themselves. Invaded Iraq and we are cleaining up the leftovers.

Now they are running to Europe for protection. Maybe, they will find safe haven in Spain. Who knows? Maybe, Spain will clean up the mess for us.

Seems link the Bush strategy is effective to me.

GMT: sorry, make that three comments.

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.

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

“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.

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

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.

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.

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…