Looks like I was wrong in We Stand Together. The Spanish electorate has spoken, and it’s voted in the socialist party, which plans to withdraw troops from Iraq.
Evidently, the Al Qaeda connection to the Madrid bombings has left the public with little taste for foreign involvement. This, of course, is part of what Al Qaeda seems to want, and what they expected of the U.S. following 9.11. I think the leadership was operating under the Black Hawk Down model, where America would withdraw from conflict as soon as it saw its soldiers in bodybags.
I’m still trying to parse the logic of the left-wing voters in Spain, though. After all, the big outcry against the war in Iraq is that Bush and Blair lied to the world about a connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s regime. So, let’s assume that the attacks in Madrid were conducted by Al Qaeda.
If the attack was conducted in response to Spain’s involvement in the war, then it would seem that there is a connection between those two groups, and that the left’s complaints are incorrect. The war, then, was justified to smash a national base for terrorists.
And if Al Qaeda doesn’t have any interest in “avenging” Spanish involvement in Iraq, then the left’s vote against the conservative government makes no sense. Which is to say, the vote for the socialist party smells like appeasement to me. And it makes less sense particularly for Spain, considering Bin Laden’s comments about wanting to restore the Caliphate (which would, y’know, involve taking over Spain).
I have a lot more that I’d like to write/discuss about this subject, but I have a lot of work to do at the day job (conference all week in New York), so I’m going to have to cut this short.