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Right Wingers Want Spain to Make Decision Based on Al Qaeda, Not Democracy

Right Wingers Want Spain to Make Decision Based on Al Qaeda, Not Democracy

By Michael Leon

 

OpEdNews.Com 

Suppose 90-plus percent of the Spanish people favor a pull out of Spanish military forces from Iraq .

 

Suppose that a candidate for Spanish Prime Minister runs on a platform favoring a pull out of Spanish military forces from Iraq .

 

Suppose this candidate for Prime Minister wins the election.

 

Now what should Prime Minister-elect Jose' Luis RodrÃguez Zapatero do about Iraq ?

 

"...[U]nder no circumstances pull Spanish troops out of Iraq..," writes Robert Lane Greene in The New Republic Online ("Campaign of Terror," March 15, 2004).

 

One positive thing about the U.S. invasion of Iraq is that we get to see, more clearly than in the past, the utter contempt of the war makers and their amen chorus for classical liberal values to which most to the American people maintain genuine fidelity.

 

Consider Robert Lane Greene's commentary of newly-elected Spanish Prime Minster Jose' Luis RodrÃguez Zapatero's insistence to make good on his campaign pledge to withdraw from Iraq to the approval of 90-plus percent of the population. Greene leaves out of his commentary this 90-plus percent approval detail.

 

Greene's argument leads off by his noting: "By no stretch is it a good thing for the integrity of democracy when an elected government publicly announces that it will renege on one of its central campaign planks immediately after taking office. But if ever there was a moment that required a government to do exactly that, it has now arrived in Spain ."

 

The problem, Greene argues, is that Al Qaeda also says that it wants the U.S. out of Iraq ; and as Al Qaeda continues down its bloody path of maiming and killing, anything that Al Qaeda says it wants should lead governments to engage in policies opposite to Al Qaeda's supposed desires.

 

If Prime Minister-elect Zapatero and his Socialist party do not "break this promise, they will be allowing Al Qaeda to dictate policy outcomes in a democratic country--which will surely encourage further attacks in democratic countries, especially those that were part of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq."

 

Al Qaeda dictating "policy outcomes." That's an ironic point for Greene to make.

 

Greene is suggesting that the major policy of military withdrawal favored by the overwhelming majority of the Spanish people, who voted for a prime minister candidate running on that very policy, be discarded-- not because the policy is wrong, not because the policy lacks the consent of the governed, but because Al Qaeda, presumably, wants the same policy.

 

Democracy be damned. Whatever Al Qaeda wants must guide policy (by acting in contradiction to Al Qaeda) in matters of war and democracy. If that is not Al Qaeda dictating policy outcomes, what is?

 

Putting aside the truism that the U.S. invasion of Iraq plays heavily into Al Qaeda's recruiting efforts and thus Al Qaeda has not been displeased with some results of the invasion, Greene gets even sillier in his column. According to Greene, at issue is not just what Al Qaeda desires as policy in Iraq, but rather what Al Qaeda perceives about the workings of western democracy.

 

What's important, Greene writes, is that ""Al Qaeda itself will perceive that it influenced the outcome of the election--and the group's perception will determine how it acts in the future. Believing that it has influenced the results in Spain , Al Qaeda may be tempted to play politics in other countries where governments supported the war. Will the group move on to Britain or Italy ? Or America 's allies in Eastern Europe ? What about America itself?"

 

Matters of war and peace, Greene is suggesting, should be conducted on the basis of our estimation of how Al Qaeda will "perceive" what transpires.

 

Does Greene really believe one can reason with Al Qaeda and influence how they act and what they perceive by negating the will of the majority of democratic populations? Is not the will of the governed what should guide public policy in democratic societies, and not the perceptions, threats and acts of a mad terrorist group?

 

And, by the way, it is worth noting Al Qaeda has already attacked the U.S. and other countries and it has said repeatedly that they intend on doing so again.

 

My God, what absurd, cowardly world is this Greene and the like living in to suggest we countermand democratic mandates out of fear that Al Qaeda will strike again.

 

Let's just hope that Al Qaeda does not start critiquing brutal Arab oligarchies and the expropriation of Arab peoples' natural resources, because then we will be compelled to maintain policies that accomplish the opposite of what Al Qaeda wants. Oops.

 

Mr. Greene, if you are reading: Are you quite serious?

 

Michael Leon is a writer living in Madison , Wisconsin . His writing has appeared nationally in The Progressive, In These Times, and CounterPunch. He can be reached at: maleon@terracom.net

 

 

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