[Vision2020] Spain

[Joan Opyr]

Pat Kraut goes on:

>Yes, Yes this type of appeasement worked so well before WWII. As I said, it
>will be interesting to see how this plays out.

And what appeasement would that be, exactly?  Voting for a government that 
won't lie to the people?  A government that won't ignore the will of the 
vast majority of its citizens?  Does Spain have secret plans to carve up 
Poland and give the Eastern part to Germany?  Madrid is a little too far to 
the West to qualify as Mittleuropa.

We're not talking about a choice between Churchill and Chamberlain here.  
Spain's Social Democrats will be thoroughly engaged in the fight against 
terrorism -- as all Spanish governments have been since the happy death of 
General Franco.  The choice for Spanish voters was not between supporting 
George Bush and supporting Osama bin Laden (though Mr. Bush would like us 
all to believe that that's the case).  The choice was between Mr. Aznar's 
Popular Party and the Social Democrats, and the PP was weighed and found 
wanting.   No surprises there -- the worst single terrorist attack in 
Spain's history took place on Mr. Aznar's watch.  His government's response 
was deemed inadequate and deceptive and, consequently, he was turfed out.

These are the facts, but since when have facts made their way into the empty 
talking heads of Fox News?  I'm sure Sean Hannity will press for a boycott 
of Spanish rice (unless Congress renames it Freedom rice) but his time might 
be more usefully spent if he educated himself about recent Spanish history 
and politics and took a good long look at how Europe has dealt with 
terrorism on its home soil for the past thirty or so years.  Perhaps we 
could learn something from Spain and France's fight against ETA; from 
Britain's battle with the IRA; and from Germany's problems with the 
Baeder-Meinhof and several other nasty extremist groups.

As Donald Rumsfeld himself pointed out in an interview yesterday, the fight 
against terrorism never ends.  It is a perpetual ongoing effort, and that's 
something, as impatient Americans, that we seem to have trouble grasping.  
Cleaning up Iraq will clean up Iraq (we hope), but it won't wipe terrorism 
off the face of the earth.  Increased funding for police, increased funding 
for first responders, greater (and more effective) security at our ports and 
on our transportation systems, greater international cooperation and 
relationship-building, and, last but not least, finding genuinely effective 
means of slowing the recruitment of new terrorists -- this is where we're 
falling down on the job, but it's the direction in which Spain, apparently, 
has decided to go.

Appeasment, my eye.  I'm in favor of effective policing.

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment

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