Re: Re: Re: Axis of Appeasement That's an excellent idea and it's exactly what needs to be done in the US. Conspiracy theories are running rampant in this country. They sound good because they explain all the reports. Given the fact that WMD have not been found, we need to do the same thing. The public needs to know the facts because, ultimately, the public has the final decision.
Re: Re: Re: Axis of Appeasement Let me stop you right there. Why guess in the first place? Election or no election, there is no good reason to assign responsibility until they were certain. In the first day or so after the blast, the only people who were 100% certain it was ETA were Dante and the Spanish government. MalagaFan (I think) posted that the Spanish Minister of the Interior said it was ETA within 24 hours of the bombings. ETA had already denied responsibility, and for everyone else, the jury was out. Why rush to judgment?
Question about the Spanish troops in Iraq. Was their ever consideration of extending their presence beyond July?
Well, I would have thought that the word 'alone' in my phrase 'Terrorism has NEVER been defeated by military means alone' pretty much made it clear that what I thought to be honest but there we are. However, you raise an interesting point regarding the nature of terrorism itself. I've thought for a long time that the word itself was part of the problem. How can one conflate organisations like the IRA, ETA, with the Baader Meinhof gang. The first 2 wanted a change in the structure of rule for a particular region, the latter just seemed to want everyone to go and around and stop being mean to everyone else. These are 2 utterly different things and to say that they can be fought, (I use the word loosely, of course), in the same way is nonsense. The British government has reduced the level of violence in Northern Ireland precisely by moving some way to addressing the concerns of the IRA. It has done this in collaboration with the rish government. In doing so it has pretty much pissed off the Northern Ireland protestants who are, (and we sometimes feel over here that this is probably news to many Americans), the majority in the North. You're quite correct in saying that many of the people who are presently Islamic terrorists can't be negotiated with but I would venture to suggest that some Palestinian's, for example, CAN be negotiated with about an independent Palestinian state. I also think this would 'cut the ground' from under some of the people who are supporting the terrorists in other areas. The point to bear in mind is that terrorism doesn't exist in a vacuum. I remember reading some of the accounts of the North Vietnamese soldiers fighting against the Americans during that conflict. There was one instance that stuck in my mind about some NVA soldiers who hid in a village because the Americans were looking for them. The villagers didn't want them there because they were afraid of them and, frankly, didn't particularly like them. However, when the American troops turned up they searched the village and hurt and humiliated the people there to such an extent, (probably because they thought they were helping the NVA), that the next time the NVA soldiers returned they gave them food because, now, they identified with them rather than the Americans. The problem is that it is part of the military mind set which sees every problem as a military problem that means that people are either with us or against us - Yes... I'm sure I've read that somewhere, actually - and it is this that is the problem when trying to get people who aren't connected with the conflict at the moment, (but might be at some point), on your side. Keeping the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has been a complete and utter disaster in political terms. It would have been better to have them moved to American jails and try and convict them of some crime, maybe even defining a new crime for the statute books - anything other than what we've actually done there.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Axis of Appeasement You´re right, guess is not the right word. They were going off of police reports. They should have published the reports or said nothing. The Spanish government did start pointing at ETA early, but they never really said it was them. They said everything pointed to ETA, but would not rule out other possibilities. Hindsight is a wonderful thing if we just go back in time. PP would have been better off either releasing the reports or putting their efforts into helping the emergency teams and talk up the police´s competence.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Axis of Appeasement Agreed. It´s a shame the Bush Administration won´t follow their own advice.
I was in Spain the whole time of this and there was an immediate connection made in Barcelona between the Iraq war and the bombs but it was the govt. looking clueless and or lying by trying to blame ETA which got people annoyed enough to vote them out. As one who has had a close relative killed and others injured by terrorism (in N.Ireland) I must say I am getting fed up with many Americans' gung-ho response to the whole 'terror' issue. A 'Kill them all, let God sort them out' attitude is of course natural in the emotional wake of an atrocity but is wholly inadequate in terms of realpolitik solutions. Ulster is a good example of where we failed to solve the problem through uniquely military means but have been succeeding by addressing the social and political causes. When Hercules chopped off one head of the Hydra it was at once replaced by another. All conflict has causes, not just symptoms. I believe the way to defeat terrorism is policing & intelligence in the short term and political, grass-roots solutions in the long term and not just kicking over every hornets' nest we come across in a blaze of short-sighted bravado.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Axis of Appeasement Unless Aznar and his boys are being framed like the Mona Lisa, I think there's no longer a question that they tried to mislead the Spanish public, and were busted: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_03/003506.php Yeah, it's a blog post that I got to through another blog post. But that's where the links are.
Re: Axis of Appeasement Maybe you read English different then I do, but the chain of events in the IHT article shows that initially Aznar and company was initially told it looked like ETA and they jumped on it. Sure, they could have much smarter. But that´s a far cry from misleading the public. BLOG, acronym for Big Loser´s Opinionated Garbage
Re: Axis of Appeasement So, I thought the Spanish were cowards? Gee, guess not - they're willing to actually fight terrorism: http://us.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/03/29/spain.troops.ap/index.html
Re: Axis of Appeasement Canada has 2,000 troops in Afghanistan now. Plans are to leave a force of 500 behind for the long-term. I'm not impressed by Spain's commitment.
Re: Axis of Appeasement Spain is willing to put more men in Afghanistan and quit fudging around in Iraq. Whether you are impressed by the numbers or not is irrelevant. They obviously are not about to leave Afghanistan despite the claims that they are cowards.
Re: Axis of Appeasement It's the fact that Spain and other Euroleaders talk so much about wanting to help Afghanistan. Yet when push comes to shove, they get cold feet. They practically need to be dragged kicking and screaming to the task at hand. Their words mean nothing until we see real contributions to Afgahnistan, not token ones.