*coughs*

I think you'll find the reason the Spanish voters rejected their incumbent PM last weekend wasn't because of the bombs in Madrid, but because of the PM's insistence - in the face of all the evidence - that the bombs were placed by ETA rather than some vague Al-Qaeda offshoot. This had nothing to do with appeasement, everything to do with kicking out a leader who was clearly not up to the task of leading.

Although, to be fair, at least the Spanish PM didn't disappear for hours after the bombs went off.

Oh, come on! The same statement from the jihadists ENDORSED BUSH FOR RE-ELECTION!!!!! So by voting for Bush, you're doing their will, by your own loopy logic. If you're going to quote something, do it accurately. Andrew Sullivan just pulled the same sleazy trick regarding this story.

Calling the Spanish people appeasers is spitting on the graves of the Madrid dead. It is absolutely despicable, especially given how complicit prowars are in 3/11.

See also

Prime Minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is promising to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq. That appears to be exactly what the March 11 terrorists wanted.

It's what the Spanish people wanted first.

I spit on no one's grave other than terrorists'. Look at the timeline: incumbent leads handily in the polls, train bombings, three days later the candidate who promises to get Spain out of Iraq - the purported "motivation" for the attack - wins in a landslide. Call it what you want - I call it voting out of fear.

The point is not who won - I am not concerned about the people who did not change their votes - the point is that the incumbent had a huge lead and three days later he lost in a landslide. I am saying a significant percentage of the population changed their votes specifically because of the attacks, in the hope that pulling Spanish troops out of Iraq would disincline terrorists to attack Spain again. I am saying their votes were directly influenced by the attacks and the votes were changed to specifically give the terrorists what they demanded.

Were there other factors? I am sure there were, including allegations that the administration blamed the ETA before it had enough information to do so, but it seems clear to me that a very significant number of voters specifically changed their votes to meet terrorist demands. Period.

The incumbent was not leading handily in the polls; on the morning of 3/11, before the bombings, the PSOE had been gaining steadily on the PP and the two parties were in a statistical dead heat. So the political impact of the bombings, so to speak, was modest at best; the PSOE had the momentum and may well have won anyway.

The Spanish didn't really give in to terrorist demands. There was already a significant amount of anger (throughout) Europe about the support of the respective governments to the war in Iraq.

Other issues mediated the resonance of that anger in time. If the bombings had an effect like you seem to state it was to revigorate this anger.
If a government doesn't listen to the people it represents, furthermore is unable to explain tot those people why not listening was the right thing to do, and then those people suffer the consequences for a war they didn't want, start, or support, the 'representatives' get replaced. That's the democratic way, isn't it?

It to short a cut to call that giving in to terrorism. Would you rather see them vote for the incumbents because they don't want to be seen as giving in to terrorism? would that be a smart thing to do, or even a right thing to do?

The way to deal with terrorism is to see that there are causes and effects in everything. We elect politicians to take these into account and make them accountable for their success in doing so.

If that's giving in to terror, giving in to terror is a very democratic thing to do.

I know it is probably against the spirit of uninformed debate to actually look at what the Spanish have to say about the exercise of democracy (after all this is a country which spent 40 years under a Fascist dictatorship, supported by the US, before the Spanish people founded a democracy). Spain, which has been hunting, arresting and imprisoning Islamic terrorists for the past decade (including some involved in 9/11) is slandered by No-Nothings as being appeasers of terrorists. And exersizing their democracy with the full majority of the electorate voting, and having more than two political parties, why, they're positively Un-American!

Why not ask a Spaniard what he thinks, and knows about Spanish democracy? Julian Sanchez:

The bodies were barely cold from the attacks of "11-M" in Madrid, the ballots from Sunday's national election barely counted, but American pundits were already competing furiously to heap insult upon injury. The unexpected victory of the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) over the more conservative Partido Popular (PP), which had backed the war in Iraq, was widely and roundly denounced as a clear case of capitulation to terror.

"What is the Spanish word for appeasement?" asked David Brooks rhetorically, before delivering a tongue-clucking lecture to the Spanish electorate. Iberian political expert David Frum quickly dubbed the result a "swift and abject surrender to the attackers," while muy macho Mark Steyn decried "an exercise in mass self-gelding."

Now, perhaps Americans possessed of "moral clarity" in the war on terror also have a special insight into Iberian political psychology--even if many of them do think Aragón is a character from The Lord of the Rings. But this facile, if morally satisfying, reading seems to elide some of the peculiar details of the Spanish elections.

The PP was indeed projected to win a majority in the Spanish Parliament in all the major polls before the March 11 terrorist attacks, which killed over 200 Spaniards and injured more than 1,600. But they were also clearly, already, losing ground relative to their vote totals in 2000, a shift largely attributed to Prime Minister José María Aznar's support for a war in Iraq opposed by as many as 90 percent of Spaniards. The same polls that showed a likely PP victory also showed that over 60 percent of Spanish voters were uneasy with the prospect of the party, regarded even by some supporters as arrogant and unwilling to compromise with others in Parliament, securing an absolute majority. The PP's relatively strong--though still depressed--showing in May's municipal elections relied on the predominance in the public mind of the local, domestic economic issues that are the PP's unquestionable strength. With some 30 percent of Spanish voters polling undecided or refusing to give a preference as of early March, the PP advantage was already somewhat shaky.

"The Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigade"

Aren't these the same guys who claimed credit for the blackout this past summer? Oh, silly me, expecting credibility, I should just believe anything anybody says, especially if it is dressed up in the costume of authority.

Eric: "Look at the timeline"

Ah, the old post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Sorry, it doesn't work here, either.

And note the names and consider the affiliations of those calling the Spanish vote "appeasement" and "abject surrender": David Brooks and David Frum.

"Aren't these the same guys who claimed credit for the blackout this past summer?"

They WERE responsible for the blackout. The sons of bitches also stole my Honda and took it for a joy ride, before leaving it in a ditch with a Re-Elect Bush bumper sticker on the windshield. Bastards. Fucking bastards.