Spain Kneels To Al-Qaeda

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Chapeau!

Hat

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margo wrote:

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Chapeau!

Hat

Quote:

Expression: Chapeau ! - Well done!

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Brandon, that is the way that some would have you see it, but this isn't that cut and dry.

Al Quaeda did get what it wanted, but not because the people layed down for them. It's because of the corrupt goverment a-holes they had in power!

Al Quaeda: terrorists, thugs, and murderers.

All governments: terrorists, thugs, and murderers.

When you can't tell the bad guys from the good guys then nobody f*cking wins.

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Brandon, politics are not done with high school style reasoning.

The question is: did the war in Iraq help in fighting terrorism?
The answer is no.
I'll put it in Rodríguez Zapatero's words: "Radical and fundamentalist terrorism must be fought with intelligence, with a communication among the information services that we do not have today. You cannot fight terrorism with wars. What the war in Iraq did was to proliferate hatred, violence and terror".

Spaniards simply said NO to an irresponsible adventure.

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fbaezer wrote:

Brandon, politics are not done with high school style reasoning.

The principle my analogy attempted to illustrate was that some people would respond to attempts to coerce them by demonstrating that they will not be coerced. By doing exactly what the terrorists were trying to frighten them into doing, they sent a bad message.

fbaezer wrote:

The question is: did the war in Iraq help in fighting terrorism?
The answer is no.
I'll put it in Rodríguez Zapatero's words: "Radical and fundamentalist terrorism must be fought with intelligence, with a communication among the information services that we do not have today. You cannot fight terrorism with wars. What the war in Iraq did was to proliferate hatred, violence and terror".

Spaniards simply said NO to an irresponsible adventure.

As time marches on, WMD will become available to smaller and smaller groups, just as PCs continue to provide more and more people with more bang for the buck every year. If the time comes that everyone and his brother has WMD, including even private organizations, that will be the end of civilization. What distinguishes WMD from weapons of the past is that one single use of one of them within the US could all by itself be a crippling blow resulting in a million deaths. It was right to invade Iraq, because, at the moment we invaded, the totality of the history of the situation posed an unacceptable probability that Iraq had WMD or intended to have them. We cannot roam the Earth forbidding anyone to have a WMD program, but we can and should forcibly prevent people like Hussein from having them. And please don't point out that no WMD were found, because the fact that a policeman frisks a criminal he has arrested and doesn't find a gun, neither means that the policeman shouldn't have frisked him, nor that the criminal didn't have the gun a minute earlier.

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So the policeman now will frisk the Spaniards, I suppose.

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Brandon9000 wrote:

The principle my analogy attempted to illustrate was that some people would respond to attempts to coerce them by demonstrating that they will not be coerced.

And those are the easiest to coerce with reverse psycology.

fbaezer,

Your comments on this prevalent theme about Spaniards is such that I often feel no need to comment.

Thanks!

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

So the policeman now will frisk the Spaniards, I suppose.

I am saying that clearly evil dictators who make a habit of invading their neighbors should not be allowed to possess the ultimate weapons. I am not sure how to interpret your comment within this context.

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Brandon9000 wrote:

Walter Hinteler wrote:
So the policeman now will frisk the Spaniards, I suppose.

I am saying that clearly evil dictators who make a habit of invading their neighbors should not be allowed to possess the ultimate weapons. I am not sure how to interpret your comment within this context.

I agree wholeheartedly. Disarm the USA NOW!!!!

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Craven de Kere wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:

The principle my analogy attempted to illustrate was that some people would respond to attempts to coerce them by demonstrating that they will not be coerced.

And those are the easiest to coerce with reverse psycology.

fbaezer,

Your comments on this prevalent theme about Spaniards is such that I often feel no need to comment.

Thanks!

When someone attempts to murder your fellows to make you do his bidding, it is good to demonstrate that you cannot be influenced that way and bad to demonstrate the reverse.

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Brandon9000 wrote:

Walter Hinteler wrote:
So the policeman now will frisk the Spaniards, I suppose.

I am saying that clearly evil dictators who make a habit of invading their neighbors should not be allowed to possess the ultimate weapons. I am not sure how to interpret your comment within this context.

Well, since you say so ... (oh, already responded by hobitbob) :wink:

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hobitbob wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:
Walter Hinteler wrote:
So the policeman now will frisk the Spaniards, I suppose.

I am saying that clearly evil dictators who make a habit of invading their neighbors should not be allowed to possess the ultimate weapons. I am not sure how to interpret your comment within this context.

I agree wholeheartedly. Disarm the USA NOW!!!!

You would, then, advocate the immediate unconditional disarming of America?

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Brandon9000 wrote:

When someone attempts to murder your fellows to make you do his bidding, it is good to demonstrate that you cannot be influenced that way and bad to demonstrate the reverse.

See fbaezer's quote about deliberately interpreting it in the way Al Quaeda does.

Al Quaeda didn't change their minds, Al Quaeda simply highlighted the importance of foreign policy.

The most damning thing to the incumbents was not the war or what Al Quaeda wanted or not.

It was what was percerved as a coverup in regard to their attempts to keep the focus on the ETA despite all leads pointing to Al Quaeda.

A government that takes it's country to war against the wishes of the overwhelming majority is already on thin ice.

A government that is perceived to be covering up an investigation of the largest terrorist attack in their memory AFTER prosecuting said war is signing their own death warrant.

That Al Quaeda will interpret it as a success is unfortunate. But they interpret 9/11 as a success even though the US responded by lashing out at various asses.

No matter what, those deranged folk will think what they want.

In this case they did not make the Spaniards cower, they can merely be said to have highlighted foreign policy.

Most Spaniards were not planning to vote with foreign policy at the forefront, this attack from entities abroad changed the perception of this priority but in no way changed their minds about said policy.

Yes, you can join Al Quaeda in considering this their victory, and I understand why you frame it that way.

But to do so is to ignore enough factors about their politics that I can only repeat what fbaezer said:

Quote:

It's damn easy to say: "Americans are stupid and selfish". It is wrong. They have a social, cultural and political history that explains the collective ideology and political system.

Can't a similar effort be made about another country?

The notion that Spain is cowering to Al Quaeda is absurd. They are relacing a government that took them to a very unpopular war (this is no trivial issue) and that they think tried to mislead the public as to the identity of their assailants in order to hold on to power.

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From Spanish Election Tests Bush's Global Coalition

Quote:

[...]
A key question now is how other U.S. allies react to he Spanish result. So far, all of the countries with soldiers in Iraq have vowed to keep them there. But the election showed that leaders and governments facing hostile voters could eventually pay a heavy political price.

"Why did the train bombings have the effect that they did? Because 90 percent of the Spanish people did not want this war in the first place and were unwilling to pay any price for what they saw as a mistaken policy," said University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape.

"What does this mean for the rest of our allies? The Italians? The British? They, and some of us as well, may well conclude that the war against Iraq has made us more vulnerable and not less," he said.

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Note on this topic...
From what I've seen in the press - the new Spanish government said that they wanted their soldiers back by June 30 - if the United Nations doesn't take over operations in the country.

Simple solution - hand over control of the operations to the UN. That would mean that all of a sudden this is a world problem rather than a US attack. It would also mean that Bush & Co's power/agenda in the area would be greatly reduced.

By continually focussing on a "War on Terror" we give terrorists life and a spotlight that they don't usually have. If we were to get on with our lives and only focus on terror when it happens - I think you would find that terror isn't happening as often as we've been led to believe as of late.

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Re: Note on this topic...

Jer wrote:

From what I've seen in the press - the new Spanish government said that they wanted their soldiers back by June 30 - if the United Nations doesn't take over operations in the country.

Simple solution - hand over control of the operations to the UN. That would mean that all of a sudden this is a world problem rather than a US attack. It would also mean that Bush & Co's power/agenda in the area would be greatly reduced.

By continually focussing on a "War on Terror" we give terrorists life and a spotlight that they don't usually have. If we were to get on with our lives and only focus on terror when it happens - I think you would find that terror isn't happening as often as we've been led to believe as of late.

Gasp! The sound of reason! Shocked

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Sensible solution, Jer.

The problem for Bush is that he needs a major U.S. base in Iraq, both to protect the existing oil supplies and for the launching of further attacks and invasions upon other oil-rich Middle-Eastern nations identified by the Administration, after the election, as sources of terrorism. Twisted Evil

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Quote:

Q: Mr. Secretary, the Spanish vote -- to me, it represents a victory for the terrorists. I can't imagine that three days after our 9/11, we would have elected in this country the more lenient - I guess I'll say. I would have thought that they would have elected the more hawkish of the two parties in that country, but that's not what they did. How do you interpret it?

Rumsfeld: Well, it's - first of all, it just happened in the last day or two; and second, I think it's hard to do it from this distance. But when one thinks about it, it was a close election and things swing one way or another on relatively few votes. A terrorist attack is a shocking thing for a country, although Spain has experienced terrorist attacks from - (inaudible) - decades now. But how someone will eventually figure out what the implications of it are, I don't know. The position that the new leadership has announced is the position they had in the campaign and they won, so life goes on.

Q: Is it clear to you, as the secretary of Defense, this was the work of al Qaeda?

Rumsfeld: No. I think it's too soon. I just don't know.

source: United States Department of Defense: News Transcript

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This will have to be my last post for quite some time. I understand the responses posted on this board, although, except for Craven's most have been somewhat off target. Most of you have expressed vehement opinions on the "justification" of the Iraq war, the "legality" of the conflict. The problem is that that wasn't the issue I find fault with.
I do not like the Iraq conflict very much at all. It has put, what I believe, is an unnecessary strain on an already thinly-stretched military (trust me, I know).
However, all of you, check the data. The Popular Party was ahead with a comfortable lead in the polls the day of the bombings. That means, despite massive opposition to the Iraq war most Spainards were favoring maintaining the incumbents in power. This fact alone makes the entire argument of the "absurdity" of the war irrelevant. It renders the point that the Spanish opposition always opposed the war (something common for opposition to do, oppose), pointless. The Spanish electorate were favoring (by a good margin) the PP.

Then came the bombings. Then came the grief. Last came capitulation.

Craven alone brings up the point that the Spanish felt that the Aznar tried to cover up Al-Qaeda's involvement by blaming ETA. That may be true, it may be exaggerated (as many things are in the aftermath of shocking tragedy). But, in two days it shouldn't have been able to permeate the entire electorate's thinking. The facts were barely off the ground by the time the Spanish went to the polls.
No, the motivating factor that drove most of these voters was fear. Fear. Fear is understandable, but it is also one of the most dangerous motivators when deciding human action. When we give in to our fear we empower what inflicts the fear upon us.

If I entered your house and shot your son/daughter/brother/sister. Then I told you "I want you to do this." Does it matter if you always favored what I wanted? No, your familiar is dead and I demand my reward using the threat of further violence to ensure my satisfaction.

They changed their minds two days after hundreds of their own were murdered, thousands more critically injured. Call it what you want. Label the opposition "progressive." (Political party progressive? Are we this naive?) But beneath the political rhetoric, the moral stances, the liberal/conservative labels, what you have is not a dozen Islamic terrorists murdered 200 people, disrupted the lives of thousands more, proudly claimed the atrocity, ... and got exactly what they wanted, based on that alone. Now they rejoice in their victory.

Political views aside. Al-Qaeda single-handedly changed the intentions of a people and the government of a nation. This alone is the tragedy. People die every day. Give a killer exactly what he wants (for whatever reason), and you give him a reason to kill again.

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Of course, the fact that the Spanish just captured one of six who performed the bombing sort of invalidates the whole idea that Spain is "kneeling," doesn't it? Very Happy

Spain IDs 5, one in custody

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Spain Kneels To Al-Qaeda

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