One of the biggest dislocations I experienced last week was not being able to follow the developments in Madrid and Spain in general more closely. The multiple bombing was horrendous, the sort of atrocity that makes one pause and think about the fragility of civilized life. The immediacy of local politics managed to dominate the news cycle for me and those I know, but that doesn’t diminish the sympathy one feels for those facing tragedy a thousand plus miles away.
It was only a matter of time that the shock and mourning was subsumed partly by considerations of what the political fallout would be. The national elections have forced those considerations to come faster even than they might. In the US, I think it’s going to be inevitable that one’s reading of the Spanish election is going to fall pretty flatly along party lines, with conservative crying appeasement and liberals reading it as punishment for the deceptions of a spin-focused Popular Party.
One of the smarter center-right takes I’ve seen is Robert Lane Greene’s piece in the New Republic exhorting the Socialist party to reverse its campaign pledge and keep troops in Iraq (at this point that doesn’t look likely), else al-Qaida will continue its strategy of targeting soft European populations. I see his point, but what if the case for the Iraq war continues to be shoddy - might there be no other response? Might al-Qaida not see both potential responses - withdrawal from military involvement or a Secret Agent-like arousal of the population’s ire - as desirable? I don’t know what the answer should be, but I think the Spanish electorate and government are feeling around for an appropriate response, and likely will continue to.
Of course, the Bush administration could help Spain save face by bringing in the United Nations in a serious way. Greene himself argues that,
The United States and Britain must do their parts to give Zapatero the political cover he needs to go back on his campaign promise. France and Russia, veto-wielding Security Council members that have experienced Muslim terror and have now promised to help Spain fight it, must do the same. They must work quickly to craft a Security Council resolution that strengthens the organization’s blessing of the coalition’s efforts. While it is unlikely that the United Nations will take a major political role in Iraq at this point, a strong symbolic resolution could give Zapatero enough political cover to extend the stay of Spain’s troops.
The question will be how much the US will be willing to bend. All along it has wanted purely a symbolic legitimizing nod from the UN for its geopolitical gambit in Iraq. I think the tragedy of Madrid should encourage the Bush administration to give in just a little for the sake of political cover (of course us on the left have been wanting the adminstration to change its ways for a while, so take this recommendation as you will), but certainly it is unlikely to do so, less likely in fact after a perceived affront to its policies by the Spanish people.
From the center-left, Josh Marshall has a valuable, nuanced read of the situation, arguing that Europe and the US have a fundamental difference on the relation they see between Iraq and the war on terror, which is why so many (often, conservative) American commentators misread what the effect of the bombings would be.
Now, if that’s the war as you see it, that Iraq war was either irrelevant to fighting terror or would itself produce more terorrism, then the apparent response of the Spaniards doesn’t seem at all difficult to fathom. Nor is it reducible to facile claims of appeasements.
Claims of appeasement are beyond facile, I think they’re unfair. This is a population that has been dealing with ETA terrorist attacks for some time, and politically they remain committed to a hardline, non-negotiating stance toward the Basque separatists. All you have to do is imagine (as the Populist Party was clearly able to do) how the election would have turned out had the Basques really been behind the bombing to realize that it’s not simply a matter at caving at the first bomb.
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