guardian.co.uk0,5673,117108Open ↗
2,00.html Spain got the point By defaming the Spanish
while Madrid weeps, the Bushites display a sneaking
contempt for democracy
Jonathan Freedland Wednesday March 17, 2004 The Guardian
Maybe they think it's payback time. In 2001, many American
conservatives were appalled by the reaction in some European
quarters to 9/11, a reaction crudely summarised as "America
had it coming". They insisted it was grossly insensitive to
attack the United States and its foreign policy while Ground
Zero still smouldered. They were right and I took their
side, urging people at least to pause a while before adding
greater hurt to an already traumatised nation.
But look what's happening now. A matter of days after
the event branded Europe's 9/11, and American
conservatives - including some of the very people who
were so outraged by the criticisms hurled at the US in
September 2001 - have started whacking not just Spanish
policy, but the Spanish people.
Witness David Brooks in yesterday's New York Times, outraged
that the Madrid bombings prompted Spanish voters to "throw
out the old government and replace it with one whose
policies are more to al-Qaida's liking. What is the Spanish
word for appeasement?" Rightwing blog artist Andrew Sullivan
also raided the 1930s lexicon for the same, exhausted word:
"It seems clear to me that the trend in Europe is now either
appeasement of terror or active alliance with it. It is hard
to view the results in Spain as anything but a choice
between Bush and al-Qaida. Al-Qaida won." Not to be outdone,
former Bush speechwriter David Frum, the man who coined
"axis of evil", sighed at the weakness of the Spanish:
"People are not always strong. Sometimes they indulge false
hopes that by lying low, truckling, appeasing, they can
avoid danger and strife ... And this is what seems to have
happened in Spain."
Perhaps this is how the Bushites hope to avenge what they
saw as European insensitivity two and half years ago, by
defaming the Spanish even as Madrid still weeps. But this
assault should not go unanswered if only because, if allowed
to settle in the public mind, it will widen yet further the
already yawning transatlantic gulf of misunderstanding.
Put aside the imprecision (and worse) that comes with the
abuse of the word "appeasement": the menace of al-Qaida is
real and serious enough without making hyperbolic
comparisons to the Third Reich. Focus instead on the two
grave errors that underlie this latest argument from the
right. One is a misunderstanding of democracy, the other is
a failure to make crucial distinctions.
The first mistake is the more surprising, for no word is
invoked more often in support of the "war on terror" than
democracy. Yet these insults hurled at the Spanish show a
sneaking contempt for the idea. For surely the Spanish did
nothing more on Sunday than exercise their democratic
right to change governments. They elected the Socialist
party; to suggest they voted for al-Qaida is a slur not
only on the Spanish nation but on the democratic process
itself, implying that when terrorists strike political
choice must end.
It comes from the same mentality that prompted Republicans
in 2002 to run TV ads against the Democratic senator Max
Cleland, who lost three limbs in the Vietnam war, placing
his face alongside those of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin
Laden. It is the same thinking that led one Republican
congressman to quip recently that a vote in November for
John Kerry will be a vote for Osama. It is a bid to reshape
the political landscape, so that parties of the right stand
on one side and all the rest are lumped in with al-Qaida.
The tactic is McCarthyite, the natural extension of the
bullying insistence that, in President Bush's own words,
"You are either with us or you're with the terrorists". If
that is the choice, then there is no choice: it is a mandate
for a collection of one-party states.
But this is not the heart of the matter. The right's greater
error is its failure to distinguish between the war against
al-Qaida and the war on Iraq. About 90% of the Spanish
electorate were against the latter; there is no evidence
that they were, or are, soft on the former. On the contrary,
there have been two mass demonstrations of Spanish opinion
in the past few days: let no one forget that 36 hours before
the election, about 11 million Spaniards took to the streets
to swear their revulsion at terrorism. It takes some cheek
to accuse a nation like that of weakness and appeasement.
The Spaniards showed they knew the difference between the
struggle against al-Qaida and the conflict in Iraq. It is
hardly a shock that this distinction is lost on the likes of
Frum and company: the Bush administration worked tirelessly
to conflate the two, constantly eliding Saddam and 9/11 even
though the president himself has had to admit no evidence
links the two.
The Spanish electorate were not voting for a cave-in to al-
Qaida. On the contrary, many of those who opposed the war in
Iraq did so precisely because they feared it would distract
from the more urgent war against Islamist fanaticism.
(Witness the US military resources pulled off the hunt for
Bin Laden in Afghanistan and diverted to Baghdad.) Nor was
it appeasement to suggest that the US-led invasion of an oil-
rich, Muslim country would make al-Qaida's recruitment
mission that much easier.
Of course, this is not to argue that if only the war had not
happened then Bin Laden and his henchmen would have laid
down their arms. Al-Qaida's leaders are murderous, guilty of
the most wicked acts; nothing we can do will reach them. But
that is not true of the many thousands, perhaps millions,
drawn to the message of extreme Islamism; the people who
would never plant bombs, but might cheer when they go off.
These are the hearts and minds that have to be won over if
the war on terror is ever to be won. To assert that the
conflict over Iraq made that task harder is not a surrender;
it is a statement of the obvious.
It may be comforting, but this struggle cannot be won by
painting the world in black and white, with America as the
good guy and everyone else cast as terrorists or their
allies. It will require nimble, subtle thinking - constantly
making awkward but essential distinctions.
So, yes, it is quite true that al-Qaida will be chillingly
gratified by the Spanish result but, no, that does not mean
that Spaniards voted for al-Qaida. Similarly, it is quite
possible to be strongly opposed to the Iraq adventure and
militantly in favour of the war against Bin Laden - indeed
the two sentiments can be strongly linked. There is a
difference, too, between appeasing men of violence and
seeking to limit their appeal, just as the leaders of global
terror must be separated from those who could become their
followers. Islam is no monolith, nor is the west, and all
the fine gradations within these categories matter
enormously.
The world has never looked more like a complex knot, and it
will take precision and patience to untangle it. Wrenching
away at it in fury will only make the problem harder - and
our lives more dangerous.
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