Michelle Dubert: Spain's election will weaken war on terror

Congratulations to al Qaeda -- after a string of tactical terrorist mishaps in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iraq and countless other locales, you've now managed to torment a nation a mere 74 hours before their presidential election, then essentially overthrow its conservative and pro-Iraq government to advance your iconoclastic, anti-Western, anti-Semitic intentions. That's quite an accomplishment.

In response, one might think that the Spanish people, riled with fear from the death of 200 civilians in what they deem their own version of America's 9/11, would elect a leader uncompromising in the face of terror when voting just three days later. They didn't; instead, their trepidation deluded them to choose a Socialist appeaser.

Of course, the victory of Jose Zapatero is seen as a repudiation of the Bush foreign policy agenda and Spain's involvement in the war in Iraq. But Spain's outgoing president, Jose Maria Aznar, and his Popular Party (set to win re-election preceding the bombings) were our strongest European allies, along with Tony Blair's Britain. Now the Spanish people find themselves the next unfortunate victims of the same terror that has antagonized the United States. But rather than confront the perpetrators, they abandon the world's efforts to eradicate them. The New York Times called Zapatero's victory "an exercise in healthy democracy." Not really. This was an extremely unwise move by the Spaniards.

The Spanish, and many others, will learn this fact the hard way now. All in all, this isn't a setback for the Bush administration -- this is a setback for every American and the entire Western world.

The days of Spanish-American collaboration are herein over. President-elect Zapatero has vowed to withdraw Spain's 1,300 troops from Iraq if the United States fails to relinquish the fledgling democracy to the United Nations by June 30, just before the precarious turnover to full Iraqi control.

He also spoke of his intentions to move away from the United States politically in order to re-establish "magnificent relations with France and Germany." I suppose the French and Germans retain more reputable records toward appeasement than the United States.

The effects of the Popular Party's defeat will reverberate throughout Europe. With one ally succumbing to terrorism rather than confronting it, more attacks may erupt amidst our other friends. President Bush constructed a large worldwide coalition to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; Spain's sudden embracing of Zapatero emboldened al Qaeda and made countless other nations vulnerable. One can't discount the possibility that al Qaeda will pull the same scheme here to ensure a John Kerry win in November.

We've learned from the past that not only does appeasement fail, it provides greater instability than before. People must realize that inaction to terrorism does not render the world safer; neglecting to respond only makes the world more susceptible to further attacks.

Last week, Washington Times columnist Tony Blankley cited a speech Winston Churchill made shortly after Hitler invaded Poland: Neutrals "bow humbly and in fear of German threats ... Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured. But I fear -- I fear greatly -- the storm will not pass. It will rage and it will roar, ever more loudly, ever more widely."

Well, the Europeans appeased. And then, the crocodile devoured them. Blankley continued, "Appeasers are likely to underestimate the price of appeasement. They always assume that peace and tranquility are available at some price. But the crocodile doesn't want a finger or a toe -- he wants the whole carcass. Even FDR agreed that you can't make a seething tiger a kitten just by stroking it."

Ramon Perez-Maura, assistant editor of the Spanish daily ABC, called Zapatero the Spanish equivalent of Neville Chamberlain. Equally optimistic is his summation of the prospective leader: "An old-fashioned European man of the left: pacifist in his 'distaste' for war and deeply anti-American ... If one were, as a laboratory experiment, to manufacture precisely the sort of Spanish leader the U.S. would find most uncooperative at this juncture in history, he would resemble Zapatero almost exactly."

The extent of Spanish-American relations under Aznar's term went highly unnoticed. As Perez-Maura pointed out, the Spanish navy intercepted a North Korean ship carrying scud missiles headed toward our outpost in Yemen. He also notes that "on the political stage -- whether in Brussels or at the U.N. Security Council -- Washington has relied on Spain to break France's lock on European foreign policy."

With ensuing alliances between Zapatero and France's Jacques Chirac -- and with Germany's Gerhard Schroeder, as well -- the potential fallout could prove calamitous to our efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terror as a whole.

Peaceful nations everywhere know now that they need to overcome threats and destruction to the same extent we do; but Zapatero's promised weakness and acquiescence will only encourage more of what we seek to avoid. Spain must take a stronger stance if it hopes to remain secure and democratic in the future. As President Bush said in a speech last Friday, "There is no neutral ground -- no neutral ground -- in the fight between civilization and terror, because there is no neutral ground between good and evil, freedom and slavery, and life and death."

Michelle Dubert is a College freshman from Closter, N.J. Department of Strategery appears on Mondays.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.