3 articles about Spain's 3/11 attack that are worth your while today:
- Spain's outgoing President Jose Maria Aznar Lopez, writes a column in the Wall St. Journal, discussing the events, how they were handled, and what should happen next. Definitely one of the good guys:
"Its lessons are simple. If we want to stop terrorists from murdering us and from dictating how we lead our lives, we must confront them. Some think the solution is to sue for peace, to negotiate with terrorists so that they might go and kill elsewhere. But that way is unacceptable to me and to millions of Spaniards. Terrorism deserves only to be defeated. This is the debt we owe to the victims of the attacks, and to the society that mourns them...."
- Joe Gandelman, who covered Spain & the Basque region as a reporter for the respected Christian Science Monitor newspaper, pens "What We've Learned About Terrorism." Really good points, all 13 of them.
- P. wonders if American commentary on 3/11 is helping us, and asks himself how it might be viewed from the other side. Given his usual views re: Europe, it's an interesting angle to take.
Minor, minor, minor quibble: The Azores are part of Portugal, thus Spain did not host the meeting P refers to.
D'oh!
My bad. I did know that. . .*grrr* I'm sorry to make an error like that. :(
My views on the EU can be separated from my views on European countries, I hope. I possibly don't do as good a job as I could in making that distinction. For example, Romano Prodi, a mouthpiece of the EU, isn't the same as our coalition members in Europe. I clarified further here.
There is a lesson here, that I fear is falling on deaf ears here in the US. This point is particularly obvious in the 9/11 hearings and acusations of Richard Clarke.
The recent decline in Bush's support (see http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Presidential_Tracking_Poll.htm) indicates that the same divisive rhetoric and political games hold currency here in the US.
It's sad that one of the most courageous and least demagogic of foreign leaders could be tarred with a charge of lying so easily. Sign of the times.
The Spanish do not lack "cojones". I prefer the term "withdrawal" to appeasement and it is by no means a Spain-specific problem. Indeed, the Spanish vote was supported by much of pacifist Europe and the left in the U.S. French philosopher André Glucksmann uses the term "West Against West", the title of his recent book, to divide the September 10 mentality from the September 12 mentality. It's less polarizing.
Joe, I'm not particularly impressed by Gandelman's points. In particular, I think Gandelman is just plain wrong about points #9 (France is getting stronger in Europe) and #11 ("But Pakistani forces apparently are now engaged in a fever-pitched effort to mop up bin Laden honchos living or operating on Pakistani soil.")
Pakistani forces are engaged in a fever-pitched effort to convince the U.S. that they're engaged in a fever-pitched effort to mop up AQ, so that the Americans don't start arming India. They're also engaged in a fever-pitched effort to convince the tribal leaders that they're taking the tourists for a ride, so that the fundamentalists don't get more successful in their assassination attempts (say, you don't suppose those attempts were staged, set-ups to convince the Americans that Musharraf was hanging by a thread and they should go easy on him, do you?).
As for France, well she jumped off a cliff, and Spain has now jumped off a higher ledge on the same cliff. France hasn't hit bottom yet, and now it has company on the flight. But that doesn't make it strong. France is weak for a number of reasons (as in Trent's joke about French government threat levels) but I think the most important one is the sheer immorality of French government and corporate policies. Check Nick Shultz's TCS column, which Glenn linked to today. Or Roger Simon's many posts about Oil-for-Food and the French Bank Paribas.
You can't mobilize people to great effort and sacrifice in the name of TotalFinaElf. You can't generate inspiring legends about how you bullied schoolgirls into leaving their scarves at home. You can't strike fear into the hearts of bad guys when the propellor keeps falling off your one aircraft carrier. So, in what sense is France getting stronger?
In the same sense as the NASDAQ in September 2000.