by TheOldHippie 102 Replies latest social current
Congratulations to the Spanish people, who voted the socialists to power as a protest against the conservative government's supporting Bush's war on Iraq, and for claiming the Madrid bombs were acts of the ETA nationalists and not an al-Qaida attack because of the war on Iraq.
So one government has fallen, and there are many more to come, Bush.
Who says these days ain't fun?
This has to be the most boneheaded move the Spaniards ever made since the Mexican war. Moves like this will only encourage the terrorists and they'll start attacking even more European countries.
May God be with the Euros and their large, extremist Muslim population.
Uh, I'm no Bush fan, but that's an absolutely asinine statement at the top of this thread. What do you call Afghanistan and Iraq?
It it had been the UK that had been bombed, the people would be out in the streets in support of the present government and baying for blood.
I'm astonished at the Spanish attitude.
Englishman.
If it was America that got bombed, we'd go into their countries, uproot their political systems, bomb the living fuck out of their leaders, and then bomb the living fuck out of countries that gave peripherial support to their regeimes and uproot their genocidical regeimes too.....
No, wait, we already did that.
What's with these people??? This is WWII all over again! Some bully punches them in the nose, so they bend over and say Take What Ya Want!!!!! Just Don't Hurt Me!!!!
They are like the wimp on the school playground who will do ANYTHING to avoid a fight... you know... the one EVERYONE wanted to pick on more just because they were such an easy target.
I certainly won't lament over Aznar but I must admit the PSOE's victory has a very bitter taste.
On the one hand, engaging in war against 91 % of the population is hardly democratic, and the stubborn insistence on blaming the ETA against every evidence was a clear electoral manipulation which rightly backfired.
However, the message "terrorism works" is equally clearly disastrous.
Hope this will eventually result in making European diplomacy a more credible third way...
I just finished reading Slate.com's summary of the major newspapers today. The NYT, the Wash Post, and USA Today all state that the biggest reason that Spain's Popular Party lost is how they handled the event - blaming ETA before there was enough evidence.
Now, personally, I suspect that this sort of thing would happen in lots of countries...if the US were in someone else's fight (say Vietnam) and days before an election the VietCong had somehow killed 200 US cits in a terrorist attack, McGovern might have won in '72.
But blaming Bush for the fall of this government is downright ignorant. Aznar chose to step in, knowing what his citizens thought of the whole deal. The new guy is saying he'll stay if there's a UN presence...
And again, personally, I'm not certain this was al-Qaeda. They haven't taken responsibility for anything before, not directly, and not two days after... ETA might have found an ingenious way to get rid of the Popular Party.
I would guess that the messege the Spanish people meant to send was not "let terrorism win", but rather, "we won't submit to a government that doesn't adequately listen to our needs and wants".
The Spanish people, by majority, did not want to support America in Iraq, and the American people would not have wanted to go to Iraq if the real reasons had been layed out to them.
Oh what a tangled web we weave...
Regardless of my opinion of Bush and the war in Iraq, I have to say that this is the most idiotic move that Spain could possibly make. They are sending a message to the world that terrorism works. This is exactly what terrorists want. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
And, of course, socialism hasn't been working so well lately, either.
