The Spanish election results - should Tony Blair be worried?

If he has any sense whatsoever, Blair is going to hand over to Brown before the UK election and Labour will get back in. I think his pointed refusal to congratulate Kerry on the Democratic nomination (when even Bush did) was not a way of saying 'I don't need to be on your side because you won't be here soon' but of saying 'I don't need to be on your side because I won't be here soon.'

Actually, I think Blair has good reason to fear a Kerry victory - even though his personal and party politics may be far closer to Kerry than Bush. Blair's second term has been so dominated by his relationship with Dubya - publically at least closer than he was to Clinton - a Kerry victory could leave him looking foolish and isolated, especially when he inevitably sucks up to the new President.

Labour will get back in purely because a - the majority is too large to be knocked out in one go, and b - the Tories also backed the war. More so, in fact, than Blair's own party.

Would the Right have won the Spanish election if it hadn't been for the bombings and the real or perceived Al Quaida connection?

I don't know, but I hope some of the Kremlin remains. For selfish reasons; I'm visiting Moscow on Thursday for the first time.

I like the slogan the Spanish voters shouted as Aznar when he went to vote:

"Your war, our dead!"

I want to hear that used against Bush, Berlusconi and Blair now.

that terrorism works?

canada is a one party state.

that terrorism works?

it'd be an understatement to say that's not a terribly nuanced view as to why the Socialists won.

Eva Amors, 35, and an English teacher for companies, paused to search the lists. She said the events of the last few days had only solidified her support for the Socialists.

"I was never a fan of the current government," she said. "But I never would have gone into the streets for a demonstration like yesterday except that I felt like they were not telling us everything. The prosecutor said that ETA was to blame, but they never said why. I just want the truth."

You seem to have all the answers, so why bother with this thread?

To put it another way, the PP's response was terribly reminiscent to me of the first response by American officials directly after the Oklahoma City bombing - that it must be the work of Islamic fundamentalists. That American politicians, journalists and other officials weren't held accountable for their rush to judgement isn't particularly surprising, but we shouldn't assume that the rest of the world would cleave to that standard.

"I wasn't planning to vote, but I am here today because the Popular Party is responsible for murders here and in Iraq," said Ernesto Sanchez-Gey, 48, who voted in Barcelona.

I know next to nothing about politics in Spain. But the further legitimization of terrorism is pretty concerning.

And how does the following statement in Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's victory speech "legitimize" terrorism:

"At this moment I think of the lives that were broken by terror on Thursday," he said. "My most immediate priority will be to fight terrorism."

(not my view, though)

if you think for a second, duke, that i was applauding the acts/results of terrorism then you need your head checked.

New Spanish PM promises Iraq withdrawal

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2004/03/15/1zapatero.jpg

The anti-war protests in Madrid were some of the biggest in the world - the message 'ignore 90% of your population and you will be punished for it' resonates even if the bombings had nothing to do with the Iraq war.

Who is going to fill in the shortfall caused by the removal of Spanish forces? For the US to commit further troops to Iraq now is hardly an election-winner, is it? And if this is a precursor to the main event, and something happens that takes Bush down as well next year, will this be the catalyst for a totally different approach to foreign policy? Will anyone dare to try anything like the Iraq war again?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/2143406.stm

The relations between Morocco and Spain are not very good, because of problems of smuggling and illegal immigration.

To say that that the war in Iraq is the only reason that Moroccean terrorists would want to create violence in Spain is misleading.

Should a terrorist atrocity happen here (UK), two days before a general election, what effect would it have? Anti Govt? Anti Opposition? or no-one goes to the polls at all?

But if there was an Al Quaeda attack in London and Straw immediately said it was the IRA, and Blair strongly implied the same, and it came out that Straw had sent out a memo to all embassies to tell them to stress the IRA connection, then I think there'd be something of a backlash.

"All I can say is that no one should get the idea that somehow if you were a country which was opposed to the military action in Iraq, you are less of a target for al-Qaida and these terrible Islamic fanatics. Not at all.'

"Faced with the information that we had 18 months ago about Saddam, we judged that the only sensible and safe course for the British people was the course that we embarked on.

"We did that for the best of motives, and I believe that history will prove us to have been correct."

The foreign secretary said Mr Blair would be telephoning the Spanish socialist leader to offer him congratulations on his victory.

The Spanish socialist party, said Mr Straw, has close "fraternal relations" with New Labour and is "quite a forward-looking, modernist" socialist party.

"So we look forward to doing business with them," said Mr Straw.'

aznars major error of course was to try and implicate ETA, as suggested above, would he have got back in if he hadnt done that? but, more interestingly, why did he mislead after the event?

it is good he has gone thuogh, this is certainly a step forward for spain

I am glad he has gone, as is a Spanish close friend. I got an email from him yesterday entitled 'socialists-a-gogo', which confused me.

Momus, I think that you have no evidence at all that Brown is going to lead Labour into the next election.

results in Catalunya - PSC (=PSOE) - 39.5%, PPC (=PP) - 15.5%. PP came 4th here. That is a pretty mental statistic, although maybe its always that way down here.

Ah, evidence of events which have yet to occur -- 'the forensics of the future'! A fascinating idea.

"anyway, the switch to the socialists has been general all over spain. people really needed a change"

joan, part of the reason i have no clue is that i'm thoroughly confused by these sentiments coming, as they do up there, more or less right after one another. i know they are not necessarily conflicting but they don't seem perhaps as linear as you are making them out to be. at least to me. but then again i have no clue

First, how could you know what their aim was?

Second, why would their aim be to mindlessly "cause chaos and fear" without any particular goal?

as for al qaidas goals, i dont believe the democratic election of a socialist government in spain is one of them.

i am sure they consider the removal of azmar a bonus, as a revenge, but nothing more. or perhaps you think that al qaida and the spanish commies will become bosom buddies now?

they are anti-coalition if the word is taken to mean US unilateralism

you don't have to be an anti-war lefty, stuart, to see the advantages to al-qaeda of the US taking unilateral action and jeopardizing its european alliances

The left are not a bunch three year olds. Asking why do they hate us is a very pertinent question and there are many answers we can guess at and many we don't yet know. 200 years of imperialist oppression of the muslim world would be a good place to start your enquiries, stuart.

otherwise, spain would be like the most lefty place on earth (NB it is not)

oh come on. let's stop reading into AQ's motives whatever we want, shall we?

stuart, i am confused about this coalition. i was under the impression the countries in the coalition were in the minority?

stuart, there was a thread the other day where you nearly stretched to a full paragraph in one of your posts, that was interesting, any chance you could do that again, or do you prefer to continue with the one sentence, or in this case, ("classic"), one word posts? it was good when you posted own opinion, rather than shooting down others opinion with one word or line, and then offering nothing of your own, any chance of doing that again son?

the socialist party

n.b. "As far as America is concerned". I am obviously referring to Iraq, as far as the past is concerned. Y'know, the place that America pulled troops out of Afghanistan for?

Not to pick on g., but this is wrong wrong wrong. See: Southeast Asia. Terrorism isn't going away through withdrawal and pacification.

It seems like some of us have been taking Dubya's "you're with us or against us" line far too seriously. It is especially egregious to read Americans commenting that Europeans don't take terrorism seriously, when they've been dealing with it as a real problem far longer than our country has.

but, not joining in american war on iraq doesnt equal pacification?!?! it was no business of spain (or britain and america) to go to iraq in first place! they shouldnt have been there to withdraw!

but whatever the rights and wrongs of that, whether they should have been or not, surely the message of the al qaida bomb is to target american allies. whether or not they pull out is a moral question of course, whichever you think right, but surely that doesnt stop the fact that this bomb was a way of forcing that question.

i mean how can this not have been a message to american allies?

...Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan...

oh? A CBS/NYT poll out tonight says that Americans believe, by a 51-42 margin, that the war was not worth the costs.

USA Today last week
"10. Regardless of which presidential candidate you support, please tell me if you think John Kerry or George W. Bush would better handle each of the following issues."
Bush - 54 Kerry - 39

Terrorism pushes Bush to 60, Kerry down to 33.

That's true. And you're right about the level of support for the war. But I think my number is more telling. A certain number of respondents will be unwilling to say they are against the war because they perceive saying against as not "supporting the troops" or being "against America" or simply admitting error. But asking whether it's worth the costs is more like "tell me what you really think."

"So, uh about Chile? Or, hey, El Salvador? Mexico? What about..."

I love that poem, but may I just say that the translation is inadequate. 'Stalin Way' is the street I live on, and it's called Stalin Allee, even in English. (In fact, now it's called Karl-Marx-Allee, but it's the same street.)

Haha, you got me! That's exactly what I did!

?

(How many times are you just going to make up positions and beliefs for me anyway? This is like the third thread where you come up with something that I never said and start going off on it?)

That hijacking of the discourse happened immediately after Sept. 11, and we've never been able to get it back. So instead of talking about some particular strains of radical fundamentalist Islam (Wahhabism, in this case), and talking about their socio-political-economic roots (in, ahem, Saudi Arabia), and how they relate or -- just as often -- don't relate at all to other strains of Islam, fundamentalist or no (like, the fact that Wahhabism has traditionally been all but genocidal toward Shia Islam), and basically specifically identifying specific problems in specific places, highlighting them to all the world (because these things certainly are a concern for more than just the U.S.), and then figuring out how and where to deal with those problems, we just call it all Terrorism and pretend there's some shadowy monolith out there that we're all either fighting or not fighting. I mean, basically, the leadership of the United States has utterly failed to actually identify the challenges at hand. And in failing to identify them, and thereby understand them, it has contributed to further international destabilization, particularly in the Middle East -- and international destabilization isn't good for a lot of people, but it's sure good for people running a terrorist campaign.

Sorry, I know everyone here knows all this stuff, it's just that the whole blanket "War on Terrorism" approach is so completely muddled and deceitful and just plain wrong that it drives me bonkers -- and when even the critics of the approach still find themselves talking about it in the deceitful terms defined by the people taking that muddled tack, it's even more distressing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1171704,00.html

This, by top liberal Timothy Garton-Ash, is interesting: he's wrong that 'objectively' the election result in Spain vindicates the terrorists. But whahe says about Europe's attitudes towards its Muslim population is pretty pertinent.

The general reaction to the Socialist victory was strange - i.e. "Al-Qaeda influenced this election." Al-Qaeda is premably hopping mad because of... Spanish involvement in Iraq? Once again, people, OSAMA BIN LADEN IS NOT THE LEADER OF IRAQ. If there is some other connection here please come forward because the leaders of the world could use your help.

Neither is he Palestinian; but the invasion is unlikely to have pleased him or his supporters.

Non-involvement is not an option. The U.S. (and the rest of the oil-burning world) is up to its elbows in Saudi Arabia. The question is how we use whatever influence we have there. Clearly our policy to date (don't make any noise as long as the oil keeps flowing) hasn't worked out too well. I'm not suggesting invading Saudi Arabia or anything like that, but we have to find ways to engage the reformers who already exist there (just as they exist in Iran). I'm all in favor of finding and catching terrorists wherever and whenever possible, but by the time they've become terrorists it's already kind of late. The key is addressing the underlying situations that produce the terrorists in the first place. Saudi Arabia's oil wealth plus its social and political repression plus its staggering unemployment rate (upwards of 30 percent) is a bad bad bad combination. (And yeah, Saudi Arabia is not the only problem here, but it's a major one, and it's telling how reluctant the Bush administration has been to say anything about it.)

Making Saudi Arabia democratic isn't going to remove the terrorist threat -- quite the opposite.

Short-term, that could be true. "Democracy" per se is no panacea. But using assorted incentives (and sanctions) to encourage broad liberalization (social, political, economic) has to be part of the approach. And that's best accomplished by strong, voluntary international institutions, of the sort the United States is so certain at the moment it can do without. I think the Bush abandonment of American internationalism -- as an ideal, albeit one rarely lived up to -- is probably the worst thing that's happened in the last three years. Most of the other bad things the Bushies have done flow from that.