STING2 said:
The PP had consistent lead in the polls until the bombing. This indeed was a victory for AQ. Their goal was to scare enough Spanish people into voting instead for the opposition and they clearly succeeded. The facts speak for themselves. Al Quada understands this and is certainly doing whatever it can to possibly launch more attacks throughout Europe with the same results.
This new Spanish government claims Iraq is a total disaster and decides to withdraw its troops. If one supports democracy and human rights, the last thing anyone should be doing is withdrawing their troops from Iraq. There is important work that needs to be done to get Iraqi government and society on its feet and moving forward. Its sad that some people do not share that goal. Clearly, withdrawing the 1,300 Spanish soldiers currently helping the Iraqi people in variety of ways is not going to help the Iraqi people.
Its a fact that many people in Spain feel that their governments involvement in the Iraq war makes them a bigger target for terrorism. Voting in this opposition government that plans to withdraw from Iraq is certainly appeasement. Its an attempt to shield their country from further terrorism from Al Quada. This is precisely what Al Quada wanted to see in the elections and 41% of the people delivered, regardless of their individual reasons for voting for the opposition. Without the terrorist bombing, the polls show that the PP would have won the election.
OK, I'll tell you what has happened here in Australia in the last few days. We have an election this year. We, like Spain, sent a few thousand troops to Iraq for the main part of the Iraq war. We still have some there. The Australian people, like the Spanish, had massive opposition to the governments decision to do this. Not quite as high as Spain (ours was in the 70%+ 'against' range, Spains in the 90%+). We had the hundreds of thousands of people protesting in the streets (as did virtually every country on earth) against the war. Any democratic government who does something against the wishes of 70% of the country, something major like going to war, should expect a backlash. If it's 90% or above, they should consider themselves damn lucky to have another day in power.
It's a year since the Iraq war, and believe it or not, people move on. People return to voting on issues like health care, taxes, education etc. They have in the back of their mind "Ok, I'm pissed off with you still for Iraq, but to be honest your tax cut does effect me well, and I'm voting for me first, the conscience of my country second." Or something like that. An election one year ago would have ranked Iraq as voter priority one. In Spain before the bombing, I bit it slipped out of the Top 5, maybe out of the Top 10.
The bombs go off. The Spanish President/PM muddles his way through the aftermath. Is he lying again for political gain? Is this "War on Terrorism" doing anything, considering AQ just bombed our city? He's pointing fingers and giving us answers, but is his plan the right one, and should we trust him anyway? Suddenly terrorism, Iraq, WMD lies, blind support of the universally despised Bush, all these things have shot back up the charts to #1 on the voters minds.
When the Iraq war debate was at it's hottest stage, if there was an election in any of the 'Coalition of the Willing' countries, the UK PM, the Australian PM, the Spanish Pres all would have been booted out of office. 70%-90% of their countries disagreed with them. Do you understand?
When those issues are brought back up to #1, the people of these countries have a deep distrust of these leaders and their motives. The Spanish were not voting to appease AQ. They were not voting because they thought that pulling their troops out of Iraq will mean no more bombs. They were protest voting against a guy who has spun too much shit for too little results and has been caught out too many times.
Anyway, I started this with "what has happened in Australia over the last few days". Our PM, John Howard, was obviously shaken by what happened with the Spanish elections. There was a steady stream of Government leaders, and the PM, who spoke out about it being a terrible thing, this appeasement of AQ. It all sounds a lot like that line "If you are protesting agains the war, you are supporting Saddam". Either they can't think of new spin, or they are stupid. Everyone I think, was looking at Howard like, yeah, no one would vote to appease AQ. No one would believe that if we pulled our troops from Iraq at this stage that it would make a massive difference to our chances of being a target. But look at how scared you are. Look at the tail between your legs.
Then the head of the Australian Federal Police, meaning, the highest ranking law enforcement guy in Australia (head of the FBI equivelent) came out and said "Australia is more at risk because we sent troops to Iraq". Yes, we know. Pretty obvious. Everyone would assume that. A day later he retracted the statement. Odd. A day after that we find out that the Prime Minister forced him to. What the fuck? Don't treat us like kids, and don't make your attempts at propaganda so obvious. You are acting like someone who is scared and has something to hide.
It's simple. If these right wing leaders want to stay in power, they have to learn to be honest about their motives, truthful in their facts and logic, respect the wishes of oh, say, 90% of their countries and stop treating their populations like dumb herds of sheep who will believe everything they say, jump everytime they use the word 'terror' and bow down to the god of "War on Terror".
It won't take a bomb on the eve of an election to get a "Coalition of the Willing" leader booted. All it will take is anything at all that puts those issues back at #1 on the minds of voters as they walk into the booths. They just want to hope that they can keep it to health care and tax cuts. Make populations of those countries vote on 'terror', 'war on terror', 'Iraq', 'WMD', 'our relationship with GW Bush' and they'll get booted.
That's what happened in Spain, and it will keep on happening in these countries till their leaders realise the original error of their ways.