American conservatives' reaction to the Spanish election

Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian comments on how quickly American conservatives seemed to take on open hostility to the Spanish people, less than one week after the horrendous 11-M attack, because of their desire not to participate in Bush's grand adventure in Iraq: Spain got the point 03/17/04.

Witness David Brooks in yesterday's New York Times, outraged that the Madrid bombings prompted Spanish voters to "throw out the old government and replace it with one whose policies are more to al-Qaida's liking. What is the Spanish word for appeasement?" Rightwing blog artist Andrew Sullivan also raided the 1930s lexicon for the same, exhausted word: "It seems clear to me that the trend in Europe is now either appeasement of terror or active alliance with it. It is hard to view the results in Spain as anything but a choice between Bush and al-Qaida. Al-Qaida won." Not to be outdone, former Bush speechwriter David Frum, the man who coined "axis of evil", sighed at the weakness of the Spanish: "People are not always strong. Sometimes they indulge false hopes that by lying low, truckling, appeasing, they can avoid danger and strife ... And this is what seems to have happened in Spain."

Perhaps this is how the Bushites hope to avenge what they saw as European insensitivity two and half years ago, by defaming the Spanish even as Madrid still weeps. But this assault should not go unanswered if only because, if allowed to settle in the public mind, it will widen yet further the already yawning transatlantic gulf of misunderstanding.

Freedland goes on to point out that this reaction not only shows a lack of respect for the processes of democracy. The Iraq War has always been extremely unpopular in Spain. But also and more importantly, it shows how completely the Bush supporters identify the Iraq War with the so-called War on Terror. As he says, "it is quite possible to be strongly opposed to the Iraq adventure and militantly in favour of the war against Bin Laden - indeed the two sentiments can be strongly linked."

The Spanish electorate were not voting for a cave-in to al-Qaida. 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.