So, it can't be both?
Democracy, Not Appeasement
By Jefferson Morley
washingtopost.com Staff Writer
Thursday, March 18, 2004; 8:34 AM
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 Wall Street Journal, among other conservative U.S. news sites, argues that the Spaniards who voted in antiwar socialist Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero would have preferred "Chamberlain to Churchill."
In Europe, those are fighting words. "Chamberlain" was Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister in the 1930s who hoped to avoid war by acquiescing to Hitler's expansionist designs. "Churchill" was Winston Churchill, the Conservative prime minister who led Britain to eventual victory in World War II.
Madrid's leading daily, El Pais (in Spanish, by subscription), rejected such polemics in a Wednesday editorial. The editors of the Spanish daily defended Zapatero by citing his frequent statements that, without a U.N. Security Council resolution, he would withdraw Spain's 1,300 troops from Iraq. His position is "at bottom no different than the proposal of Democratic candidate John Kerry," noted El Pais.
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."
"The Spaniards are not appeasers," said the editors of the Phillipine Daily Inquirer in Manila. "They are a people who understand, and expect, that democratic rule is derived from a legitimate mandate to govern. A mandate that cannot be maintained by lies, managing information, and most of all, using a national tragedy for political ends."
One of the few foreign news outlets charging the Spaniards with appeasement was the Australian. The editors conceded that the election results "can be read in many ways, including some that have nothing to do with appeasement. For example, voters were clearly and understandably unhappy that the conservative government rushed to blame Basque separatists before any hard evidence was in."
Nonetheless, they fear the results "will be read as a success by the terrorists: 'We bombed the Spanish government out of power.' Another danger is that, throughout the West, political opportunists on the far Left or far Right may take the Spanish example as a cue to ramp up their campaign to blame terror on the very leaders who have taken a strong stand against it, such as Tony Blair, George W. Bush and John Howard. This will also provide great solace and hope to the suicide bombers-in-waiting.
"We have no option then but to stand firm against our enemies and accept that the risk of a terror attack in Australia is a fact of life, just as the people of London, Moscow, New York and Tel Aviv have done for years. The grim reality is that Madrid's fate can be ours," they conclude.
"The appeasement accusation will grow stronger and get uglier in the weeks and months ahead," predicts Rami G. Khouri, editor of the Daily Star in Beirut, Lebanon. "It deserves a full and fair hearing, and nobody should shy away from it or be intellectually terrorized by the charge."
Khoury acknowledged the danger that al Qaeda will again use terror attacks to influence Western elections. On the other hand, he said Spanish voters "took to the streets in their millions to say that they are against terror and will fight it vigorously. They also said that the policy chosen for this end by their former government is a failed policy. Most of the world, in fact, takes this view."
In Khoury's view, the challenge facing the world remains urgent: "to defeat terrorism by devising a mix of political, economic, social and military policies that are based on accurate analysis and diagnosis, effective actions and a realistic prognosis." |
