Only the terrorists'.
As Spain agonizes over the Madrid terrorist train bombings of last week that left 200 dead and over 1,500 wounded, today's election there is directly tied into public conception of who is responsible for the attacks. Is it the indiginous Basque-seaparatist ETA or is it an affiliate of al Qaeda?
The evidence is thus far inconclusive, but here's the thing: from a political and moral standpoint, it shouldn't make any difference. It is abject fear alone that is causing many to blame the government for the attacks if it turns out to be al Qaeda (a statement purported to be from al Qaeda claims that the attacks were in response to Spain's participation in the war in Iraq). The only people to blame are the terrorists, not any government that has aggressively gone after terrorists.
Terror is terror and there is no excuse, no moral mitigation regardless of claimed impetus behind it. The victims are just as dead, the killers are just as wrong regardless of their rationale. I am astonished that people buy into any of this terrorist propagandizing: are the vitims of Oklahoma City any less dead than those of the World Trade Center? Is the destruction any less real, the threat any less serious? Of course not, the only possible reaction is to increase enforcement, cooperation among intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and the agressive, dogged pursuit of those connected to ALL organizations that count terror as among their behaviors.
I only care what justifications the twisted mass murderers of innocents and civilians make in terms of how they facilitate intelligence gathering and predicting their behavior - all with an eye toward finding and liquidating them and preventing further attacks. The point isn't to respond to the accusations and justifications of the terrorists, the point is to find and eliminate them as quickly and permanently as possible.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - mike
"The point of all this is that those who would resort to the mass murder of random civilian men, women and children forfeit any claims to a moral platform by the encompassing evil - yes, I said EVIL - of their actions."
Which is what we did in Iraq. 10,000 civilains and untold number of poorly armed conscripts who had no choice but to fight.
I call that evil.
2 - Eric Olsen
They absolutely had the choice not to fight and were invited repeatedly NOT to fight by the U.S. forces - many chose not to fight. The forces made it clear they were at war with the regime not with the people. AP esptimates the "civilian" total as a result of allied military action closer to 5,000, and that includes many who were hostile combatants. Any civilian death is tragic, but how convenient it is to ignore the daily death toll under the Saddam regime - what would the number have been had the regime been allowed to continue indifintely? We don't hear shitheads like Iraq Body Count mention the deaths averted by removal of the regime from power. Estimates of victims of the regime range from 500K to 2M - that's 25-100K per year over 20 years. Let's just forget that and a regime of random and targeted terror.
3 - jadester
which is (partly) why there is also an anti-war movement. Terrorism, in any form, is evil and wrong. Of course, there is the little matter that one nation's terrorist is another's freedom fighter, but that's a whole other can of worms. Basically, freedom fighter=terrorist=badness generally. Although i have to admit there are some situations (however unlikely) in which i'd become a "freedom fighter" for my country, if only because i'd see no other choice. Example? say, now this is not exactly likely but anyway, say there was another ise in the Nazi movement in Europe. Say They made an army that started rampaging across Europe, and they managed to invade here, England. I would become a "freedom fighter" for england for a number of reasons.
Although please understand i DO NOT equate our Western governments/cultures with that of the Nazis, i use that purely as an extreme example. The actual chance of a situation like that arising in my lifetime must be so close to zero you can't see the gap.
I also think that with, for example, al qaeda, they DO have plenty of other options, it's just that they're too immature or power-crazy or just plain evil to choose them. That's why you are highly unlikely to see Bin Laden take part in a suicide attack. You really think he wants to die (assuming his kidneys are holding out) whilst he holds such power, even in its diminished state, as he does?
4 - Shark
ERIC: "...those who would resort to the mass murder of random civilian men, women and children forfeit any claims to a moral platform by the encompassing evil..."
MIKE: "Which is what we did in Iraq."
Whoo boy. Another embarrassment to the left.
Are you financed by The Heritage Foundation to make liberals look like a bunch of blubbering idiots?
Seriously, no sane person would equate what happened in Spain to what happened in Iraq. One was specifically designed to kill as many innocent people as possible; the other was a friggin' WAR between two state sanctioned armies.
Jeezus.
I was against the war, but I still recognize that the US military took extraordinary measures to avoid civilian causualties in Iraq.
When strict ideology requires you to say such hyperbole, it's time to reconsider something...
5 - Ron Hardin
All terrorism isn't the same. The regular kind you can sort of live with, at some level.
The new kind, which aims to kill as many Westerners as possible, the more the better, cannot be tolerated in an age of modern weapons. It's too dangerous by far.
We didn't go into Iraq aiming to kill as many as possible. In fact, we need their help, and the help of other people on the other side, so that such terrorists have no place to grow anywhere in the world.
The aim therefore is to do it so that the other side comes out better off too.
If you're going to put infinite value on human life and all that stuff, you're not going to understand what's going on.
The new policy after 9/11 is that the United States will no longer co-inhabit the globe with eleventh century governments.
6 - The Non-Nutcase Mike
"Terrorists cannot be appeased, negotiated with, reasoned with, or have their attention deflected elsewhere as a matter of any governmental policy: the only appropriate governmental policy is direct confrontation, unambiguous condemnation and agressive pursuit and elimination of terrorists and their accomplices and enablers. Anything else is giving in to fear and wishful thinking."
On one hand, I want to agree with this. On the other, I think the reality is that Spain is an example of how things can unravel. It may be perfectly rational for the average Spaniard to think, for example, that the US will win or lose the war with or without Spanish help. If that's the case, the Spanish have every incentive to free ride off the US. They will unavoidably benefit from our victory, and if they believe they make no difference in the outcome, they save themselves some harm by not sticking their neck out.
Of course, the problem is that if everyone makes this calculation, things will fall apart totally. Today was a clear step in the wrong direction in that regard.
7 - Noemi
Spain is on its knees.
8 - Me
You wrote:
"And regarding the Iraq accusations, does anyone notice the screaming, grand irony of al Qaeda claiming that their justification for mass murder in Spain is the Spanish government's support for the war in Iraq? I thought al Qaeda and Iraq had nothing to do with each other. I thought Iraq had nothing to do with the War on Terror."
This reasoning is illogical. First, the CIA has stated that Iraq and Al'Qaeda were not connected.
Further, what Al'Qaeda is doing is to hinder U.S. interests at home and abroad. One of our interests is having a democracy in Iraq. Spain is assisting the U.S. in making that goal of a democratized Iraq a reality. Al'Qaeda cares little for Iraq, they do care about hindering the U.S. ability to advance its interests in the Middle East.
Thus, attacking an on the fence supporter of the war on Iraq makes perfect sense but it DOES NOT mean that the Baathists and Al'Qaeda are connected.
9 - Phil
What happened today in the Spanish election is in a way as chilling as the bombings themselves.
Terrorists have now seen that they can topple elected governments with cleverly timed, strategic strikes meant to help elect what just about every developed democracy has, namely, a party of the left deeply tempted by the impulse to appeasement, by feckless "root causes" and "why do they hate us?" navel-gazing, and by a general reluctance to face up to the reality of a global war--yes,I said "WAR," Senator Kerry--in which the entire civilized world is in the terrorist crosshairs.
Mark my words, the terrorists will try this strategy elsewhere. One of the fanatics who run Hezbollah has already bragged publicly about how they will kill American soldiers in Iraq to defeat Pres. Bush--who can doubt the terrorists would also be happy to take American civilians' lives right here in America, if they can?
One last point: As we read about yet another Palestinian homicide bombing, we should realize that all the Spanish and other European despisers of Israel had better wake up. Many Spaniards as well as other Europeans like to preen themselves on their alleged moral superiority to the "neocolonial" Israelis, but in the jihadis' eyes, there's no difference between Spain and Israel. The jihadis think that both Israel and Spain are squatting on so-called "Muslim" land--the former since 1948, the latter since 1492--and they would like to drive both out of existence.
10 - Alan
EC writes: >>And regarding the Iraq accusations, does anyone notice the screaming, grand irony of al Qaeda claiming that their justification for mass murder in Spain is the Spanish government's support for the war in Iraq? I thought al Qaeda and Iraq had nothing to do with each other. I thought Iraq had nothing to do with the War on Terror.
Sorry but your logic is bad. Al-Q and the baathists had nothing to do with each other and the Madrid bombings do not change that. The islamists see the war on Iraq as an attack on muslims everywhere. They are avenging the war on muslims, not the downfall of Saddam. This also allows them to gain sympathy within the muslim world as large. As Tenet said last week, all indicators show that recruitment for Al-Q has increased in the year since the war was started. Many people that opposed the war did so because they believed it was totally unrelated to the fight against terrorism and would only strengthen the appeal of the extremists. It looks like they were right. Iraq was such a waste of time and resources and a diversion from the real threat posed by extremist terrorists. Bush should be held accountable for that.
11 - Dirtgrain
Shark, quit summoning David Koresh.
Dead people = bad. More dead people = better. 2+2=5. And the only way to avert the killing of people is to kill people. This has long been established. I won't be so naive as to claim that violence is never necessary. Clearly, one should defend oneself. But pre-emption and unilateral invasions will only make for more violence overall--not less. We should have let the Iraqis free themselves if they ever got so motivated. We shouldn't have gotten involved.
Ron said: "The new policy after 9/11 is that the United States will no longer co-inhabit the globe with eleventh century governments."
The US likes to deal with eleventh century governments--they are way more easily ripped off than true democracies (see the ill will on the part of the US toward Lula and Chavez, Aristide as examples). A lot of the terrorism in the world is our creation--even though that in no way justifies such terrorism. We can do things in the world to significantly reduce terrorism without becoming Nazis ourselves. Saudi Arabia is a good example. Our corporations make tons of money off of Saudi Arabia. We make deals with the royal family and its friends--both sides get mo' money, mo' money. But the people of Saudi Arabia don't get mo' money. They get squat because the rich-ass bastards in their country are keeping the profits from their valuable resources to themselves. This bastard ruling class doesn't want to take the heat for how unhappy the people are. So, they allow anti-Western, anti-US ideologies to spread--as in the madrasas. Almost all of the 9/11 highjackers were Saudis (no doubt madrasa valedictorians). Why did we not invade Saudi Arabia and do away with the terrorist-breeding machine that it is? Our rich-bastard leaders are making mo' money.
Phil, what has happened with the US's unilateral, pre-emptive, "with us or against us" post-9/11 actions has been just as chilling--the entire world is in the US's crosshairs, and you seem to be one who wants to aim it. Such policy will lead to a world war. "With us or against us" will lead to world war.
Whatever. Keep on fighting for peace until the whole human race is eradicated. Peace at last.
12 - Phil
With all due respect, I would insist that we are already in a world war, like it or not.
Perhaps we could have "peace" by slitting our own throats or becoming the slaves of bin Laden and his ilk, but short of embracing one of those "options" we have no choice but to fight.
We can win or we can lose. Period. There is no third option. Our enemies would glady kill every last one of us--leftwing or rightwing, gay or straight, religious or not, quasipacifist or not, whatever--and would glory in the slaughter.
IMHO, if we try to deny the nature of the situation we're in, we'll have gone a long way toward sealing our own doom.
The moderate measures we are now trying--stepped up police and intel activity, conventional operations involving calibrated use of force plus nation-building efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq--amount to a classic limited-war strategy. If this strategy doesn't work--let's say we get hit again in a really big way, with chem/bio/nuke weapons--things could get really, really ugly.
Far from wanting to put the whole world in the crosshairs, the truth is I don't want to see anything like the really ugly scenario unfold, which is why I hope our current, measured and, yes, preemptive, strategy works. That terrorists can effectively knock out a member of the coalition behind this decidedly non-unilateral strategy with a few sacks of dynamite worries me greatly, I must confess.
As for the Saudis, I hold no brief for them, and agree that they are very near the core of the problem. I'm sure sure that Saudi money is still flowing into terrorist coffers and fundamentalist madrassahs.
But again, I'm not an indiscriminate-crosshairs kind of guy. If I thought that direct military force was the best way to deal with the Saudis (as I believed, and still believe that it was the best-available way to deal with Saddam), then I would favor making open war on Saudi Arabia.
I think w/ the Saudis we have a number of other, viable options left, however, and so I would like to play those cards before we resort to harsher steps, tho' I would hardly rule those out.
But let's be serious: The poster who raises the question of invading Saudi Arabia is not calling for such a step any more than all the peaceniks who were carrying on about the North Korean early last year wanted to bomb (or even get tougher in other ways with) Kim Jong-Il. They were using NK purely as a red herring to score a cheap debating point, and I fear that the question of what to do about the Saudis is being used in the same way on this thread today.
13 - Dirtgrain
I brought up the Saudis to point out our role in creating anti-Western, anti-US attitudes in the world that ultimately spur terrorism. We can reduce terrorism by "attacking" the hideous practices of the world's corporations, many of which hold a lot of power in the US. It's all about money. Don't be fooled by all of the religious mumbo jumbo. If the Saudi people got to benefit from the resources that their leaders sell and hoard, the anti-US sentiments would be so strong.
14 - Dirtgrain
Oops. The anti-US sentiments wouldn't be so strong.
15 - Ms. Tek
Gunsgunsgunsgunskillkillkillbangbangbang
16 - corsair the rational pirate
I blogged about similarities between the Spanish vote and the movie High Noon.
Read about it here.
17 - Tom Galvin
President Franklin D. Roosevelt eloquently said to Americans, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" in response to the horrific sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, over 62 years ago. Today, Spanish voters were motivated by fear in response to a devastating terrorist attack that occurred last Thursday.
(sorry about the messed-up link, last time)
18 - mike
Clearly, the Spanish people agree with me
19 - Shark
Dirtgrain, I tend to agree w/you. I was against the war, 'kay? I never bought the 'al queda / iraq connection.' I've said since day 1: If we want to stop terrorism at its root, invade the friggin' Saudis and install a Starbucks and a McDonalds on every corner.
I was only pointing out that to equate the bombings in Spain to the US in Iraq is not helpful. It's hyperbole that gets us nowhere.
Certainly, we helped create the terrorists we're now fighting. We helped arm and finance them, directly and indirectly through the Saudis.
But I think it's more about religion than it is about money. We may part ways here, I dunno.
20 - Thor
Of many posts I have read on the Spanish elections, I do not recall reading anything on the impact of the televised demonstrations on the eve of the elections in Madrid.
When I first saw images on CNN-International, I was struck by three oddities: (1) I had understood that all-political campaigning was supposedly suspended after the terrorist mass murder in Madrid yet this demonstration had all the markings of a staged partisan affair, (2) the "spontaneous" demonstrators all seem to carry a pre-printed "PAZ" ("Peace" in Spanish) - strongly suggesting a planned and organized operation (not to mention that "PEACE" has been a signature slogan of Communist and Leftist parties in Europe and beyond), and (3) they were demonstrating at the ruling party headquarters, not the Government offices, they supposedly distrusted.
Somehow, this all reminded me of the "We Was Robbed" staged demonstrations by Democrat partisans in Florida in 2000 and related revival in the 2004 U.S. campaign.
I can't blame CNN for tipping the (apparently spooked) Spanish electorate, but I could not help notice how CNN misrepresented the obviously partisan crowds as merely "anti-government demonstrations" on the eve of the elections, and how NBC reinforced the same in their Sunday night U.S. National News. Chock one more for media bias.
21 - Phil
Is attacking corporations really the left's answer to every problem?
As for money vs. religion: Bin Laden comes from a family worth billions. Ayman Zawahiri had a career as a prominent physician. Mohammad Atta had an MA in urban design from a German university and was the son of a well-to-do doctor.
Their motivations had/have nothing to do with money. It may all be "mumbo-jumbo" to some, but they take their religious notions seriously, and they believe that God has licensed them to kill us all.
Nor do they really need all that many foot soldiers: I've read that the 9/11 plot cost only about US$250,000 and involved probably fewer than 100 conspirators.
Sure we helped to create the mujahideen and the mess in Afghanistan, but you have to shoot the nearest wolf first, and in the late 70s/early 80s the Soviets were taking advantage of our post-Vietnam confusion and weakness (vide the invaluable help Carter gave in destroying the Shah and destabilizing Iran) to threaten the Persian Gulf and South Asia. We had to do what we could to stop that, which meant helping the mujahideen.
Similarly, beating Hitler involved giving Stalin a grip on half of Europe, but first things first: Hitler had to be dealt with immediately, and undesired side effects had to be coped with later. In that sense, the Berlin Wall was "blowback" from the Normandy Invasion.
Reality can be jagged and messy. Mature minds recognize that "ideal" solutions often don't exist, that second-guessing is as easy as real-time decisionmaking is hard, and that a course of action with untoward side effects might still be judged to have been the best available at the time it was chosen.
22 - Dirtgrain
Shark, I only meant to request that you stop summoning David Koresh. The rest was directed at Eric and others--my mistake.
Phil, yes I do tend to blame corporations for a lot of the world's problems. Hell, I just blamed corporations for our cultural decline here. As for the money issue, take away the inequality and poor conditions in some other countries, and I don't see the hatred being nearly so strong. Take away the corporate dominance and ripping-off that goes on in some parts of the world (e.g., the Middle East), and the hatred would diminish. Economic inequality is the foundation for the religious fundamentalism. I realize that there are other factors such as the concept of "the other," group dynamics, etc. That upper-class people are leading the rebellion/terrorism is not surprising. It seems often to have been this way in the past.
23 - Eric Olsen
Thanks for all the comments. Dirtgrain: this is where your rather remarkable allegiance to Marxism is most glaring and a clear impediment to your understanding. Certainly economic distress has some impact on the willingness of some to seek solutions, ie scapegoats, in the arms of terrorist ideology, but this has NOTHING to do with the core Islamofascist motivation, which is religion-based exceptionalism that says "we are right and everyone else is wrong, and not only are they wrong but their wrongness is a blight upon the earth that must be eradicated by any means necessary." It is emphatically NOT the fault of the West or "corporations" that the Islamic world has been in economic, and cultural decline for 700 years or so - it is their own fault. Their hatred of the West stems from misplaced resentment over their own failures, ineptitude, authoritarian superstructure, worship of the past, and a culture that reveres death over life, and is unwilling to separate out individual human rights into the secular sphere - a refusal to concede that there even IS a secular sphere.
Regarding Iraq and al Qaeda, I was not saying there is or was a direct connection between the Saddam regime and al Qaeda, I was simply pointing out the irony that these terrorists would use support for removal of the Saddam regime as an excuse for a terror attack when the cry from the anti-war side all along has been "there is no connection, there is no connection, if the glove doesn't fit you must acquit." Whether or not there was any direct connection between the regime and al Qaeda is irrelevant (other than for intelligence purposes): it is still the same war, and the events that have transpired in the last year only reinforces the reality that this is a global war against Islamofascism and that Iraq was just one attainable goal on the path.
24 - David
Calming down a bit, I'll note you're changing your goal from fighting "terrorism" to fighting "Islamofascism" (I find the latter term sort of annoying, incidentally; it seems to have been coined by Hitchens as part of his endless contortions to reconcile his neo-conservatism with his Troskyism). All ranting and GOP-shilling aside, the arguments about whether or not W (or, preferably, someone more thoughtful, if it ultimately seemed necessary) were complicated, and part of the argument against it was that it was diverting resources from the actual war on terror. This recent attack might seem to vindicate that argument (parenthetically, the extremely large numbers killed by Saddam in the war with Iran etc. were quire a few years in the past - and, of course, winked at by the US at the time - and there really wasn't any imminent threat of a repetition. At present conditions are better in some ways than just prior to the war; in others they are worse. Hopefully things will get much better in the future).
There's a letter from a Spanish reader on Maxspeak. Essentially he said that 90%+ of the Spanish population had been against the war, and that the government had thus gone very much against popular sentiment; however, they had been willing to forgive the government on the grounds that it was fairly harmless. This attack dramatized that it was not (and, again, that it was not effective in fighting terrorism). In any case, terrorism affects voting. I thought that USA-PATRIOT was craven, but that's life, I guess.
25 - David
Incidentally, the interesting thing about Iraq Body Count is in fact is that the figures are so low - certainly lower than I had expected, considering that the 1st Gulf War resulted immediately in tens of thousands of deats, and, within a few years, hundreds of thousands, because of deliberate targeting of life-sustaining infrastructure, followed immediately by the sanctions (the reason being, as I understand, is that the US wanted to inspire a revolt, but then changed their collective mind). Meanwhile, we have Bill O'Reilly claiming that 100,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed, and that it's all being covered up by the liberal media. Which I think is bunk, but still.