Spain was the victim, Canada the audience

[rodbarnett]

Colby Cosh

When I saw the pictures of Friday's anti-terror demonstration from Madrid, I thought back to the title of a book written by Jose Ortega y Gasset in 1922 -- Espana Invertebrada, "Invertebrate Spain" -- and noticed how much the crowds stretched out for miles in Colon Square looked like a backbone, the backbone of a nation. Invertebrate no longer. Spain had a rough 20th century, suffering a multilayered civil war bracketed by authoritarian regimes. But no outrage in all of Spain's long years of turmoil produced a display of this scale. Violence has forced the Spanish to reassert the wish to live and work in a liberal democracy, free from the threat of symbolic mass political killing.

The left in North America is very fond of "spontaneous public demonstrations" meant to mimic these occasions. These protests are inevitably choreographed by deep-red umbrella groups; often their target is some festival of high capitalism like a World Trade Organization summit. It's planned protest, protest by the numbers -- literal numbers, no doubt, on some Trotskyite's clipboard. Every peace-minded person who ever pulled a face at Bush administration arrogance and found himself shuffling his feet alongside some soy-stuffed hippie clown with an "AMERIKKKA" sign should look hard at the pictures from Spain. That is what a spontaneous display of public sentiment looks like.

A few years ago, safety from assassination wouldn't seem like so much for an American or an Australian or a Spaniard to have asked; now these countries are no longer safe from the Islamic-fundamentalist death cult. I suppose we in Canada can congratulate ourselves on our government's willingness to preserve our tranquility by acceding -- if only through impotence -- to what is becoming discernible as blackmail. We can only hope our moment of courage in sending troops to fight the Taliban will be overlooked. Pick the right foreign policy, and the trains will reach their destination: This is the deal now. Since we lack the military wherewithal to invite further retribution, the choice has been made for us.

I had my misgivings about the American war in Iraq -- I still think something different about it every day, often based on the last intelligent thing I read about it. But what I think today is this: It's not practical to take the side of neutrality when there's a gun to your head. We do fight our battles with the United States, scrapping over percentage points on lumber tariffs and bickering with ourselves over whether we want to participate in ballistic missile defence. I can't help noticing that, as "tense" as things sometimes get between us and the southern neighbour, compressed dynamite in a backpack never enters into it. Spain was the victim on Thursday, but the intended audience was Canada -- Canada and every other country that is wavering in its determination to support a Pax Americana. To do so carries moral risks, but to acquiesce in the taking of the free world as a hostage is immorality on a much larger scale.

In Spain, opponents of conservative Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar are calling him a "war criminal" and unashamedly endowing him with responsibility for the attacks, because he stood alongside George W. Bush and Tony Blair on the issue of the Second Gulf War. The disarmamentarians and crypto-communists will argue that they don't mean to take away the guilt from those who built the bombs, even as they do just that. It's a recipe for Spain to be rendered invertebrate once again -- as spineless and feeble as Canada.

The argument for blaming Mr. Aznar, however repellent on its own merits, would seem to have been undercut still more by the letter sent to the London newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi claiming responsibility for the bombings on behalf of al-Qaeda. The artifact might not be genuine -- who knows? The bombings might yet turn out to be a Basque-separatist outrage, or something else -- but the sentiment is familiar, and the warning still chillingly relevant. The letter said that the attack "was a part of the settling of old scores with crusader Spain, America's ally in its war against Islam."

Crusader Spain: It's a clarifying phrase. It would be hard for even the most demented theorist to pin the medieval Reconquista on Mr. Aznar. But the opportunists vilify him just the same, and judging by early exit polls reaching the international press as I write this late Sunday, the tactic may have worked.

You know the same voices of appeasement would be raised here instantly if the Peace Tower were blasted to smithereens one fine morning. These terror bombings, these sparks of rage, are not just about the persistence of American nation-building in the Muslim world; they are about the ancestral guilt of Western civilization. And their perpetrators will not be placated by anything less than the suicide of Western civilization.

http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/comment/story.html?id=487e0627-fef7-4f16-b687-f12bc937a200

[bemildred]

1. They are still trying to figure out the spin, aren't they.

I haven't seen some of those shallow cliches in quite a while.

[KoKo]

6. What a contradiction this article is. Praising Spain for growing "spine"

and then slapping the country down. He wrote it before he knew the final vote was to throw Aznar out, so he must have been "clueless" that it would come out the way it did.

His trashing of our own American Protests is way below the belt, also.

I understand what he might be trying to say, but he get's it wrong, anyway.

[Lisa]

2. picking your friends on the basis of who's NOT bombing you ...

... is as "impotent" as the so-called passivity he decries. I hope he comes back when he gets some better arguments.

I wish the columnist would remember the spontaneous appearance of more than 100,000 Canadians at the memorial service on Parliament Hill after the 2001 attacks -- or I suppose that doesn't count, given how the majority of Canadians aren't backing US foreign policy these days.

[Manix]

3. What a total load of crap.

[whirlygigspin]

4. ...there's one born every minute

Oh please! keep rationalizing if it makes you feel better.

This is about two assholes and their "friends" fighting over oil/power $$$--One is named Bush the other Bin Laden.

The rest is just nonsense they feed to the freepers so they can get themselves re-elected. "defence of marriage act" anyone? ROLF

There IS one born every minute, and they support this nonsense in the guise of patriotism. God help Bush if the freepers ever get wise and realize the're being played!

But that's not enough! they even support giving up their social security, and what is it? a Trillion to give to NASA, that's in Florida & Texas, in case you forgot where the Bush's live. hahaha!

You gotta admire GWB, he sure knows how to make e'm smile while he's screwin e'm deep. He's gonna be laughin his ass off for years.
hahahahaha!

[Moderator]

5. rodbarnett

Per DU copyright rules
please post only four
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DU Moderator

[teryang]

7. One can't help but think

...that this author was informed of the "appeasement" spin by appropriate officials in time for publication.

This whole theorem buys into the Iraq-terrorism connection pumped 24-7 by the American regime's wurlitzer. The trouble is it has no basis in fact.

The Spanish people just voted for the government they wanted. It's not soft on terror at all, it's against the war in Iraq, those are two different policy issues. The spanish people have been against the war in Iraq from the very beginning. The former government ignored them, now its gone.

Let's hope the chimp will go the same route.