In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
Democracy, Not Appeasement
Don't call it appeasement.
International online commentators from Madrid to Manila are rejecting the suggestion that Spanish voters who voted out the country's pro-U.S. ruling party in the wake of the March 11 terrorist attack resemble the Europeans who sought to appease Adolf Hitler in the late 1930s. The accusation, says the Parisian daily, Le Monde, is "contemptuous."
...
The appeasement argument shows "a lot of contempt for the Spanish people who live daily with the threat of terrorism," say the editors of Le Monde.
Spanish voters ousted Jose Maria Aznar's Popular Party "not out of fear, but anger," according to the French daily. "They did not support a government and a president, that deceived them and sought to manipulate their votes by putting all the responsibility for the attacks on the ETA [the Basque separatist group] while already possessing clues to Islamist involvement. The handling of the information, backed by pressure on the big media, revived the memory of other deceptions, such as the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which Mr. Aznar refused to explain."
"The Spanish right was beaten by itself, by turning to methods that it unfortunately does not have a monopoly on," the editors in Paris conclude. "That is why Spaniards' fresh start, far from amounting to resignation in the face of terrorism, is a lesson in democracy."
The appeasement argument fails to distinguish between the war against al Qaeda and the war in Iraq, says columnist Jonathan Freeland in the Guardian, the leftist London daily. While 90 percent of the Spanish electorate opposed the Iraq war, "there is no evidence that they were, or are, soft on [al Qaeda]," he writes.
"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 Spanish voters did not cave in to the terrorists, he says.
"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-Qaeda's recruitment mission that much easier."
- rob 12:49 PM - [PermaLink] -
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