Democracy is good as long as you vote for the pro-Iraq invasion party
In the minds of the right and the pro-war left, it hasn’t taken long for the Spanish to go from dependable allies from ‘new Europe’ in the War Against Terror, to victims of Al Qaeda, to ‘selfish myopic dupes’:“Instead, the country has chosen introspection, division, surrender and the snake-oil of appeasement. To those Spaniards who let 3/11 swing their vote in the Socialists' favour I can only say: You selfish, myopic dupes.”
Anthony Cormack has a somewhat more nuanced stance, but even he says:
“In practical terms, the terrorists have won. They have launched an attack on an American ally and the result they have seen from it is that within 96 hours the anti-terror coalition has folded like a house of cards and one of the Coalition countries will be withdrawing from Iraq with almost immediate effect.”
Other bloggers, from Instapundit downwards, are more wacky, but the general view is the same – when you cast your vote nowadays, you should first think what Al Qaeda’s going to make of the result, and unless you vote for the pro-US invasion of Iraq party, Al Qaeda have won (1). This unedifying site of bloggers, often with no knowledge of Spanish politics whatsoever, telling the Spanish what they should do suggests democracy to them is merely a word President Bush says from time to time.
It also seems to me to bring up some unfortunate consequences. As these people believe we are in an ongoing war, a vote for anybody other than Tony Blair at the next election (or the Labour leader) clearly will be a vote for Al-Qaeda, particularly given the Tories’ shifting position on Iraq and defence spending.
That ends of course in saying that a vote for Kerry is a vote for Osama. I imagine this is what a lot of the right-wingers believe, just as a vote for Dewey was a vote for Hitler.
More strangely, it seems to conflate the War against Terror and the invasion of Iraq, which of course exists only in their heads. Quite clearly one can be for the first and against the second. Indeed it is my view, and that of millions, that resources used in invading Iraq: the £5bn and counting, and half of the British army required, could obviously have been used better in this country or others fighting terrorism.
Is this then why the Spanish voted for the socialists and against the popular party? Coud it be that they are serious in the war against international terrorism, and decided that the Bush/Blair/Aznar policy of invading countires obliquely related to it was not the best way to fight it? Maybe bringing the Spanish troops home is a better policy?
Certainly we have been told, by President Bush no less, that the first duty of a government is to protect its citizens. Thursday’s bomb blast is evidence that Aznar’s government was failing in that responsibility. Maybe that is why his party had to go.
(1) How seriously you should take a lot of the right, and particularly it's advocacy of democracy and liberty, is of course a debatable point. On Sunday we saw a glimpse of their agenda through the site BiasedBBC (which tries to 'expose' BBC left-wing 'bias'), where one contributor fantasised about the professional torture of journalists (not just BBC ones) merely for asking whether the bombs might make a difference. Later I'll post some of the comments, so you can see for yourselves what kind of nutters we are dealing with.
Update: My mention of the pro-war left was in response to a post by Gene on Harry's Place. I should in fairness therefore note there is an excellent comment (in the comments to Gene's post) by Harry, pointing out that sending messages to Al Qaeda assumes they are open to debate, which is not the usual pro-war left view.
Update II: I got my Anthonys mixed up, it was Cormack not Cox. He also suggests I misrepresent his position, and outlines it in more detail. It seems to be merely that this looks like weakness to Al Qaeda (which begs the question -- well what can voters do about that?). It also seems to drastically confuse the battle against international terrorism with the war in Iraq.
posted by Matthew @ 3/15/2004 09:40:00 AM
Comments: 0
