FULL ARTICLES

THE SPANISH DISHONOURED THEIR DEAD

The Spanish dishonoured their dead
By Mark Steyn
The Daily Telegraph (London)
March 16, 2004

"When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, naturally they will like the strong horse." So said Osama bin Laden in his final video appearance two-and-a-half years ago. But even the late Osama might have been surprised to see the Spanish people, invited to choose between a strong horse and a weak horse, opt to make their general election an exercise in mass self-gelding.

To be sure, there are all kinds of John Kerry-esque footnoted nuances to Sunday's stark numbers. One sympathises with those electors reported to be angry at the government's pathetic insistence, in the face of the emerging evidence, that Thursday's attack was the work of Eta, when it was obviously the jihad boys. One's sympathy, however, disappears with their decision to vote for a party committed to disengaging from the war against the jihadi. As Margaret Thatcher would have said: "This is no time to go wobbly, Manuel." But they did. And no one will remember the footnotes, the qualifications, the background - just the final score: terrorists toppled a European government.

What was it all those party leaders used to drone robotically after IRA atrocities? We must never let the bullet and the bomb win out over the ballot and the bollocks. Something like that. In Spain, the bombers hijacked the ballot, and very decisively. The Socialist Workers' Party wouldn't have won, except for the terrorism.

At the end of last week, American friends kept saying to me: "3/11 is Europe's 9/11. They get it now." I expressed scepticism. And I very much doubt whether March 11 will be a day that will live in infamy. Rather, March 14 seems likely to be the date bequeathed to posterity, in the way we remember those grim markers on the road to conflagration through the 1930s, the tactical surrenders that made disaster inevitable. All those umbrellas in the rain at Friday's marches proved to be pretty pictures for the cameras, nothing more. The rain in Spain falls mainly on the slain. In the three days between the slaughter and the vote, it was widely reported that the atrocity had been designed to influence the election. In allowing it to do so, the Spanish knowingly made Sunday a victory for appeasement and dishonoured their own dead.

And, if it works in Spain, why not in Australia, Britain, Italy, Poland? In his 1996 "Declaration of War Against the Americans", Bin Laden cited Washington's feebleness in the face of the 1992 Aden hotel bombings and the Black Hawk Down business in Somalia in 1993: "You have been disgraced by Allah and you withdrew," he wrote. "The extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear." To the jihadis' way of thinking, on Thursday, the Spaniards were disgraced by Allah; on Sunday, they withdrew. The extent of their impotence and weaknesses is very clear.

Or, as Simon Jenkins put it in a hilariously mistimed cover story for last Thursday's Spectator arguing that this terrorism business is a lot of twaddle got up by Blair and Bush: "Bombs kill and panic the panicky. But they do not undermine civilised society unless that society wants to be undermined." And there's no chance of that happening, right?

Jenkins's argument, such as it is, is that a bomb here, a bomb there, nothing to get your knickers in a twist about: that's one thing we Europeans understand. But what he refuses to address is the shifting facts on the ground.

Europe's home-grown terrorism problems take place among notably static populations, such as Ulster and the Basque country. One could make generally safe extrapolations about the likelihood of holding Northern Ireland to what HMG used to call an "acceptable level of violence".

But in the same three decades as Ulster's "Troubles", the hitherto moderate Muslim populations of south Asia were radicalised by a politicised form of Islam; previously broadly unIslamic societies such as Nigeria became Islamified; and large Muslim populations settled in parts of Europe that had little or no experience of mass immigration.

You can argue about what these trends mean, but surely not that they mean absolutely nothing, as Sir Simon and the Complaceniks assure us: nothing to see here, chaps; switch back to the Test and bring me another buttered crumpet; when Osama vows to avenge the "tragedy of Andalucia", it's just a bit of overheated campaign rhetoric, like Kerry calling Bush a "liar", that's all.

For the non-complacent, the question is fast becoming whether "civilised society" in much of Europe is already too "undermined". Last Friday, for a brief moment, it looked as if a few brave editorialists on the Continent finally grasped that global terrorism is a real threat to Europe, and not just a Bush racket. But even then they weren't proposing that the Continent should rise up and prosecute the war, only that they be less snippy in their carping from the sidelines as America gets on with it. Spain was Washington's principal Continental ally, and what does that boil down to in practice? 1,300 troops. That's fewer than what the New Hampshire National Guard is contributing.

The other day, the editor of Le Monde, writing in the Wall Street Journal, dismissed as utterly false the widespread belief among all Americans except John Kerry's campaign staff that France is a worthless ally: "Let us remember here," he wrote, "the involvement of French and German soldiers, among other European nationalities, in the operations launched in Afghanistan to pursue the Taliban, track down bin Laden and attempt to free the Afghans."

Oh, put a baguette in it, will you? The Continentals didn't "launch" anything in Afghanistan. They showed up when the war was over - after the Taliban had been toppled and the Afghans liberated. And a few hundred Nato troops in post-combat mopping-up operations barely registers in the scale against the gazillions of Americans defending the Continent so that EU governments can blow their defence budgets on welfare programmes that make the citizens ever more enervated and dependent.

The only fighting that there is going to be in Europe in the foreseeable future is civil war, and when that happens American infantrymen will want to be somewhere safer. Like Iraq. There are strong horses and weak horses, but right now western Europe is looking like a dead horse.

 

A WAR NOT OF OUR CHOOSING

A war not of our choosing
By Melanie Philips
Daily Mail (London)
March 15, 2004

On the videotape which purported to claim responsibility by al Q'aeda for the carnage in Madrid, one line in particular sounded an absolutely chilling and authentic note. 'You love life', said the speaker, 'and we love death'.

Last night, the shattered citizens of Spain threw out their government. They were angry that it had apparently cast suspicion on the Basque separatists Eta to avoid taking any blame itself for making Spain a target by supporting the war in Iraq.

But although we still don't know for sure, there are obvious pointers to al Q'aeda involvement. The sheer scale of the inhumanity which targeted so many Spanish innocents for death demonstrated what we understood on 9/11 -that we are up against an enemy of a kind we have not seen before.

This is not the IRA-style terrorism with which we are wearily familiar. In al Q'aeda and its associates we are dealing with a death cult, enemies of life and of humanity itself, who have said: 'We are not fighting for you to offer us something, but to eliminate you'.

Indeed, it is vital to grasp that - despite the tape's claims over Iraq and Afghanistan - those who say Madrid was targeted only because Spain supported America are grievously mistaken. The facts indicate we face something far bigger and more terrifying.

Months before the Iraq war, al Q'aeda issued a stream of pronouncements listing Turkey, Spain, Italy and Vienna for attack - because these were once Muslim fiefdoms and are now 'occupied territories'. Radical Islamists refer in their sermons to the 15th century loss of Muslim Spain to Catholicism- which is why the Madrid attack had such resonance.

These are people for whom historical defeats have the same salience as current events. So Osama bin Laden has even blamed Britain for destroying the Ottoman empire after World War 1. The purpose of the jihad is nothing less than to re-establish the Muslim empire which once stretched across much of the globe.

This means al Q'aeda's sights are set on Africa, Asia, India and China as well as large chunks of Europe. This is why it has supported Islamist terror in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and other Asian provinces of the former Soviet Union; or in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, or against India in Kashmir.

For al Q'aeda is waging a war of religious conquest. Its fundamental aim is to purge the world of heretics and infidels, whom it defines as anyone who doesn't uphold the Islamic faith as laid down by itself.

As Rohan Gunaratna records in his authoritative book Inside Al Q'aeda, it started by attacking moderate Muslim countries. Only when these detained, tortured and killed its adherents and seized its finances did it start to target the western backers of these states.

Its long term strategy is to build an array of Islamic states to wage war on the US and its allies, in order to defeat the western values by which it feels mortally threatened. It is therefore an explicit attack on democracy. One of its key strategists, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, has said democracy is a new religion that must be destroyed by war, and anyone who accepts it is an infidel.

This is why the argument that Madrid was targeted because of Iraq is so profoundly off the mark. As Singapore's former Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew has observed, the inroads made by Islamist terror in his own country, where Muslims have prospered, demonstrate the fallacy of thinking that if the west never acted against any Muslim state, al Q'aeda would leave it alone.

Indeed, the jihad has attacked many countries -Morocco, Algeria, Malaysia, the Philippines - which had nothing to do with the decision to wage war on Iraq. Last week saw a human bomb attack on a Masonic lodge in Istanbul; the week before, Shia pilgrims were slaughtered in Karbala and Baghdad.

In 1995, associates of bin Laden plotted to murder Egypt's President Mubarak; in 1994, a plot was foiled to hijack an Air France jet and crash it into the Eiffel Tower. And so on, and horrifically on.

The video says Madrid was revenge for Afghanistan as well as Iraq. But we only fought the Taleban because they had promoted al Q'aeda which perpetrated 9/11. The 'revenge' argument is totally twisted. Al Q'aeda presents its own terrorist attacks as self-defence against an illusory threat by the west against Islam. So any attempt by the west to defend itself from such attacks is falsely characterised instead as another anti-Islamic onslaught.

The west was attacked long before it went into Afghanistan or Iraq. Indeed, for years it did nothing at all to combat the terror being waged against it. On 9/11, we saw where that approach had led us. That was why on that date everything changed.

For 9/11 demonstrated that, rather than being inflamed by western aggression, terrorism had been emboldened by evidence that the west had no stomach for the fight.

As Spain's foreign minister has said, however, terror is terror. It cannot be divided up into terror that is fought and terror that is appeased. Its sponsors form an intricate world-wide web, in which alliances transcend cultural divisions on the basis that my enemy's enemy is my friend.

The way to defeat it is by solidarity. The key intelligence effort will be greatly enhanced if we realise that all peace-loving, free people are in the direct line of attack: Christians and atheists, Jews and Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs, believers and non believers.

We must also make new rules to deal with a phenomenon that doesn't correspond to either conventional terrorism or war. This is not easy; we must not allow our core values to be overturned, but at the same time we must not allow those values to bring about their own annihilation. For common-sense to be stymied at such a time by the alien 'human rights' culture is just plain crazy.

Even worse, 'Londonistan' - where Islamist extremists are still at liberty to disseminate propaganda, recruit and raise funds - is still the centre of terror; and through losing control over our borders, we have no idea who is entering or leaving the country. In short, we are still not taking this threat seriously enough.

But as Lee Kwan Yew also said, this war can ultimately only be won by moderate Muslims. Accordingly, America, Britain and their allies should do everything in their power to support and protect those enormously brave Muslims who are taking their lives in their hands to push their culture towards reform and defeat the tyranny that acts in their name.

Too many people, though, still don't grasp the nature of what we are all up against. Instead, they complain we are now no safer than before - which is a bit like blaming the Blitz on the fact that we went to war against Germany.

Despite the obvious differences, we are in a war now. It was declared upon us, and we must defend ourselves. It is not possible to sit it out on the sidelines. It can and must be won; but that will only happen if we all stand shoulder to shoulder, not just with the people of Spain but those of all countries and all faiths who are now under attack.

 

A WIN FOR TERROR

A win for terror
David Frum's diary
March 15, 2004

Terrorism has won a mighty victory in Spain. The culprits who detonated those bombs of murder on 3/11 intended to use murder to alter the course of Spanish democracy - and they have succeeded.

In the months since the attacks on the World Trade Center, we have all heard - and ourselves often repeated - much brave talk about how terror cannot prevail, how justice must inevitably win through, etc. etc. etc.

The news from Spain suggests how very wrong those hopes were.

People are not always strong. Sometimes they indulge false hopes that by lying low, truckling, appeasing, they can avoid danger and strife. Sometimes they convince themselves that if only they give the Cyclops what he wants, they will be eaten last. And this is what seems to have happened in Spain.

Unlike the 9/11 attacks in the United States - which were intended as acts of propaganda to influence the Arab and Muslim world - the 3/11 attacks against Spain were acts of propaganda aimed at the local market. And again unlike 9/11, this time the terrorists succeeded brilliantly. They helped to defeat a government committed to joining the war against them - and helped elect a government whose leading members not so quietly dream of a separate accommodation.

From a human point of view, the carnage of 3/11 is a tragedy without purpose or meaning. But from a political point of view, 3/11 was aimed at a result - and it achieved it. The new socialist government of Spain will be a far less willing ally of the United States. Indeed, this attack against Spain may well succeed in pre-emptively knocking Spain out of the war in the way that Pearl Harbor was intended - but failed - to knock out the United States in 1941.

Lesson: terrorism can work. Prediction: therefore expect more of it. Expect more terrorism aimed at the United Kingdom, against Australia, against Poland, and - ultimately - against the United States. For the terrorists must now wonder: If murder can influence elections in Spain - why not in the United States?

In the United States, the terrorists have to make a very fine calculation: Which would hurt President Bush, their supreme enemy, more - to attack or not to attack?

Those who know American politics well would probably answer: choice number two. The more time goes by without a terrorist attack, the less President Bush benefits from his prestige as a war leader - and the more the national conversation turns to new subjects on which President Bush holds less of an advantage. On the other hand, the terrorists may be less sophisticated. They may hope to defeat their enemy George W. Bush in the same way that they defeated their enemy Jose Aznar. In which case - brace yourselves.

 

SPAIN GOT THE POINT

Spain got the point -- By defaming the Spanish while Madrid weeps, the Bushites display a sneaking contempt for democracy

By Jonathan Freedland
The Guardian
March 17, 2004

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.

 

SETTLING CENTURIES-OLD SCORES

Settling centuries-old scores
NewsDay
By Mohamad Bazzi
Middle East Correspondent
March 16, 2004

Osama bin Laden's grudge against Spain goes back a very long time.

The al-Qaida chief has a penchant for historical symbolism, and in the Islamic world, few symbols are as resonant as the 15th-century downfall of the Muslim empire of Al-Andalus, which was centered in what now is modern-day Spain.

"He views the demise of the Caliphate in Spain as if it happened yesterday," said Diaa Rashwan, a leading expert on Islamic militants at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.

The Caliphate was the political and religious authority carried by the men who succeeded the prophet Muhammad after his death in 632 as rulers of the Islamic state. As the Muslim empire expanded, there were competing dynasties based in Damascus, Baghdad and Granada, Spain.

In speeches and decrees, bin Laden has alluded frequently to the collapse of the Islamic Caliphate as the turning point for the world's Muslims. The Caliphate was not officially abolished until 1924, but to many scholars, its decline began with the fall of Al-Andalus.

"Let the whole world know that we shall never accept that the tragedy of Al-Andalus would be repeated," bin Laden declared in a videotaped statement broadcast around the world Oct. 7, 2001, the day the United States began the bombing of Afghanistan.

At such a decisive moment in his own life, specialists say, bin Laden chose to highlight the story of Al-Andalus as a cautionary tale. To bin Laden and other militants, the Islamic empire in Spain collapsed because of infighting among rival Muslim princes and clans.

"To bin Laden, Al-Andalus represented the height of Muslim glory, and its downfall was a great betrayal," said Mohammad Salah, an expert on Islamic militants at the pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat. "He uses it often as a lesson for Muslims about the importance of remaining united."

In the 8th century, Moors from North Africa conquered the Iberian Peninsula and annexed it to the Muslim empire. They established a vibrant society centered around the cities of Granada and Cordoba and used Spain as a base from which to fight Christian armies in Europe and try to further spread the Muslim empire.

By the mid-1400s, Christian forces had pushed the Muslims out of much of Europe. In 1492, Granada was ceded to Ferdinand and Isabella, who later expelled all Muslims and Jews from their Kingdom of Spain.

To bin Laden, that was when the golden age of Islam ended.

"Bin Laden has a long list of historical grievances," Salah said. "Spain is near the top of that list."

Bin Laden has singled out Spain repeatedly for its backing of the U.S.-led war in Iraq and its crackdown on al-Qaida operatives since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In one audiotape broadcast last year on the Arabic TV network Al-Jazeera, bin Laden warned that Spain would be among six special targets.

In a letter claiming responsibility for last week's train bombings in Madrid, an al-Qaida-linked group hinted at a historical grudge.

"This is part of settling old accounts with Spain, the crusader, and America's ally in its war against Islam," said the statement sent to a London-based Arabic newspaper. It was signed by the Brigade of Abu Hafs al-Masri, a group named after al-Qaida's military commander killed in the 2001 bombing of Afghanistan.

Since the mid-1990s, officials say, Spain was home to several al-Qaida "sleeper" cells that played a logistical and funding role in the Sept. 11 attacks. The lead hijacker, Mohamed Atta, reportedly held a summit there with other al-Qaida operatives two months before the attacks.

Last year, Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon indicted 35 people, including bin Laden, for belonging to al-Qaida and plotting the Sept. 11 attacks, "partially in Spain."