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• Friday, January 6, 2006 03:02 AM

  the Spanish elections of 2004

  I have a comment, not on Patrick's article, but on the letter from John Dellaportas he includes at the end.

  Dellaportas asserts that the Spanish voted out the Conservatives (Partido Popular) in 2004 so that "they could get al-Qaida to leave them alone," thus proving to the terrorists that their bombs can have a political effect. I've heard this assertion by American right-wingers before. What they conveniently choose to ignore is that the main reason Spaniards turned against the Conservatives so decisively was because the latter lied to the people about the perpetrators: they tried to convince everyone that the bombs were planted by the Basque separatist terrorist group, ETA, while they actually already had evidence pointing to al-Qaida immediately after the bombings. They probably lied because they feared what Dellaportas asserts happened; that the voters would punish the Conservatives for making Spain more vulnerable to Middle Eastern terrorism.

  However, the attempt to mislead leaked out in time before the election, turning the Spanish voters decisively against the Conservatives -- and incidentally, also proving that the Spanish are less blasé about being lied to by their political leaders than Americans seem to be.

  Who knows, perhaps some of those voting for the Socialists did do so at least partly because of worries about Spain's troops in Iraq having made the country a terrorist target. And in truth, who can blame them? The Iraq war is misguided, counterproductive, illegal, and based on lies. Why should an informed public support such an adventure, when the alternative at elections is to pull out of the mess?

  —cloudberry Read cloudberry's other letters
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