Nice article by the outgoing Aznar Party in Spain

[dude1394]

The reversal of the Aznar governement in Spain is really unfortunate. Both for the US but also flat out for the people of Spain. Their record of achievement is pretty durn impressive.

EuroWorried

EuroWorried
It's Folly to Think They Struck Us Simply for Iraq

By Gustavo de Arístegui

Sunday, March 21, 2004; Page B01

MADRID

It's been more than a week since the horror here that killed more than 200 and injured more than 1,600 of my countrymen and other Europeans, and I'm still in shock. So is the whole country. The terrorist attacks here were the worst in Europe since the bombing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. The wound inflicted on Spain will leave a deep scar for generations to come.

As we identify and bury our dead, Spaniards -- and the world -- have continued to ask: Why did this happen, and who is responsible? We now know that the attacks most likely came from Islamist terrorists, possibly with links to al Qaeda; other possible links are still being investigated. As a result, many have oversimplistically concluded that the reason is clear-cut: Spain's support for the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

I would warn against such easy syllogisms. They can lead us down a dangerous road. They can lead us to believe that any given terrorist act should be considered differently depending upon who committed it. They could even lead us, against our better instincts, to accept somehow that a terrorist group might be entitled to react violently to a nation's policy or position. Already, I sense a worrying confusion between the excuses that terrorism offers to justify itself and what people believe to be the causes of terrorism. Even as terrorist violence tore through Baghdad, Fallujah and other Iraqi cities last week, it became clear that some in Europe believe that if you feed the beast and satisfy its apparent demands, you will calm it. But the beast feeds on surrender and appeasement; it only feels sated if it obtains totalitarian power.

This is something no democratic state can ever allow. There is no such thing as legitimate retaliation on the part of terrorists. We cannot accept that something like supporting the war in Iraq may be us


ed as an excuse by a terrorist group to "punish" a democratic state. Islamist terrorists aim to destabilize as many countries as they possibly can, to force Western democracies to stop supporting moderate regimes, to extend their fanatical, violent and oppressive ideology, and to establish a radical Islamist caliphate in the ummah, or community of believers. The attack on Spain, far from being an isolated hit against a specific country for a specific reason, proves that anybody, any European or Western democracy, can be hit. Anyone could be next.

And yet we may already have started down the road of seeking to calm the beast. Look at the immediate consequences of the bombings here. In an emotional vote a week ago, the people of Spain turned out the ruling Popular Party and defeated our candidate for prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, even though we had been expected to win the parliamentary elections. Indeed, we should have won. The PP government had, by most measures, a brilliant balance sheet: Since we took office in 1986, Spain has become a country that went from 21 percent unemployment to 9 percent, a country that reduced its foreign debt from 80 percent to less than 50 percent of GDP. We went from a deficit of 6.7 percent of GDP in 1996 to a 0.5 percent surplus in 2002, and our economy continued to grow robustly even in a time of economic downturn worldwide.

The bombs overshadowed these achievements. Capitalizing on the emotions and fears unleashed by the tragedy, the Socialist Party was able to mobilize its electorate and win the vote. We did make some mistakes in managing our news conferences after the bombings, but in no way was this done in bad faith or intentionally to manipulate or lie to the electorate. Every time we learned something relevant about the attacks and who might have been responsible, we announced it immediately.

Nevertheless, the electorate went against us. And now the Socialists and new prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, have assumed a very heavy burden. They will have to tread carefully in moving to keep their promise to withdraw Spanish peacekeeping troops from Iraq, because in spite of the vote, we cannot be sure that this is precisely the wish the people were expressing.

We can be sure, however, that this is the excuse -- or at least part of the excuse -- the terrorists have offered for their actions. And let's make no mistake: All the terrorists offer are excuses. For other governments to believe that only Spain's support in Iraq motivated the attacks against us, and that those who do not support what is going on in Iraq are therefore safe, would be a grave mistake. All democracies are targeted by these organizations because they consider freedom, and the sovereignty of the people, their worst enemies. The attacks here prove that terrorism has no boundaries, strikes where and when it can, and tries to influence, terrorize or force the surrender of democratic societies.

The terrorists had more than one reason to strike against Spain. Islamists have been obsessed for years with the demise of al-Andalus, the 800-year medieval Islamic caliphate of Spain, which they consider the zenith of their Golden Age. They believe that the historic humiliation that the West inflicted on Islam started with the end of that period in the 15th century, and the Catholic conquest of Granada. In 1984, I had a long talk with a high-ranking Sunni cleric in the Omeyad Mosque in Damascus. He was very friendly when he learned that I was Spanish. After two hours of conversation about politics and theology, which are very much intertwined in that part of the world, he said to me: "Don't worry. We will liberate Spain from Western corruption." I understood then, that if even a moderate cleric was expressing this kind of thinking, then Spain's -- and Europe's -- main problem in the 21st century would be radical Islamism and the terrorism practiced in its name.

Apostasy is a fundamental concept in Islam, which not only authorizes the destruction of apostates, but also requires this from its adherents. This has become for Islamic fundamentalists one of the most important excuses to justify violence and terrorism against their enemies. These fanatics consider Spain to be an apostate country, since we were once part of the ummah, and, in their view, "abandoned" Islam.

Moreover, Spain has been extremely effective in cracking down on Islamist terrorist cells and in arresting high-level terrorists, some of whom were linked, directly or indirectly, to the atrocious attacks of 9/11. Spanish police and judicial authorities successfully investigated some of the most intricate details of al Qaeda's attacks on the United States.

If the Spanish police and antiterrorist court finally confirm that Islamist terrorists are implicated in the Madrid bombings, it will become obvious that some people have overrated the direct link between the war on Iraq and the attacks. The terrorist mind is always much more twisted than that. Simplistic analyses only lead to confusion and to the weakening of the common position all democracies must defend in the face of terror.

Already, unbelievably, some in Europe are talking about different approaches to dealing with terrorism, approaches that the terrorists could interpret as appeasement. There are those who say that poverty and the Arab-Israeli conflict are the root causes of Islamist terrorism, and if these two issues were resolved the terrorism would cease. This is risky thinking. Those are just two of the many factors behind the expansion of this phenomenon. If they were resolved, the terrorists would just make up new excuses to justify the unjustifiable. The Egyptian pediatrician Ayman al-Zawahiri, founder of Islamic Jihad and al Qaeda's number two, has already threatened France directly with attacks because of the banning of the Islamic head scarf in that nation's schools. That, of course, is a transparent excuse, since the terrorists cannot attack France on the basis of its having supported the war in Iraq. And France and others are aware of this. In the wake of the bombings here, both France and Germany, which also strongly opposed the war in Iraq, raised their antiterrorist alert level from orange to red.

The terrorist threat will not be defused by appeasing the beast or meeting its demands. The only way to effectively fight this plague is by continuing to build a solid coalition of democratic countries around the world that will fight terrorism while respecting human rights under the rule of law. We Europeans must take terrorism out of the political debate -- yesterday. And we must forget the sterile confrontation with the United States that has hampered effective action for so long. The United States is not our enemy. Terrorism is.

I believe this can happen. I believe that after the shock has worn off, Europeans will realize that we are all in the same boat, and that we must pull together at all costs. The French have always been there whenever Spain has needed their helping hand in dealing with the terrorism of ETA, and I believe they will be there for Spain and Europe now. The same will be true of Germany.

Instead of asking "who" and "why," we now need to to ask: How do we fight this threat and prevent violence in the future? How can we make our democracy stronger and how can we build stronger links between like-minded democracies? Now is the time for European societies to rally around the values and principles that have made our free countries the most stable, prosperous and advanced nations on the planet.

No one questions the legitimacy of the new government in Spain. But if we and our fellow democrats in Europe ignore that some dramatic factors, alien to Spanish politics, influenced the outcome of this election, we will be giving those who committed these terrible crimes yet another reason for satisfaction.

Gustavo de Arístegui is a Spanish legislator and parliamentary spokesman for the Popular Party of outgoing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.