Pandagon

I never really thought about it that way in such great detail, but Ezra, you may have hit an important point, if not the nail on the head.

These thick-headed numskulls, in a sheer move just to make themselves feel big and powerful, wanted to paint their fellow Spaniards who didn't vote to keep their friends in power as flower-waving pussies. And, in doing so, it gave confidence in those that support, or are a part of, Al Qaeda that they are being effective in getting what they want.

On a side note, could that be related to giving comfort to the enemy? Just wondering...

Well, I recall that we withdrew most or all of our troops from Saudi Arabia since 9/11, which was a pretty explicit Al-Q goal. I wonder why the Bush administration is so full of appeasers?

The Spanish didn't say that they would withdraw troops from Iraq. Zapatero said he'd withdraw troops unless they were placed under UN control. They don't necessarily want out: they want a new boss, or they hit the highway. Apparently, the PSOE view the occupation as a "disaster" for the war on terror and have lost trust in American direction of it. In the "l'état c'est Bush" world of Sullivan and the GoP, that's caving. Outside that particular circle of dementia, where holding multiple complementary ideas at once is no big feat, it's not.

I think that it's the main thrust of the GoP right now, and of its minions (Dennis Hastert comes to mind) to beat down the idea that, just because Bush calls something and some strategy essential to the war on terror, that it might not be. They want a unipolar world.

Excellent points, Ezra. I think it's also telling that the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress and rightie pundits shifted the focus from the fact that these explosions were allowed to occur without any interference to the election results. What was the worse outrage? I think the fact that al Qaida was able to successfully pull of a horrific bombing that resulted in the deaths of more than 200 people is a lot more frightening and indicative of a much bigger problem in the war on terror than the election results were.

To the PCP smokers who see a democratic election in Spain as a defeat in the 'war on terror', how is Putin's re-election not arguably worse? Putin did not support the war on Iraq, and has openly scoffed at Bush, in the same room, when Bush talked about WMD. Far from discussing any removal of troops from Iraq, Russia never contributed them in the first place. Why is the re-election of someone who opposed the war altogether not worthy of comment by these dipshits?

I think this cartoon makes your point for you, Ezra.

The whole wingnut argument about the Spanish elections starts from a false premise that the election results were changed by the Madrid bombings. Look at the polls and compare them with the election results. They are within the margin of error of each other. You can think of a thousand reasons why the result differed from the previous polling, and the simplest one is that the poll was not accurate.

If you concede that the polls were accurate and there was a shift in opinion, you're allowing the wingnuts to frame the debate. Far better to respond to a poor argument based on lies by discrediting the lies rather than the argument.

Ezra, you write a lot of good posts, but this one's better than usual. Kicks ass. It's nice to see the wingnut commentariat as a whole getting sliced up for being deleterious.

Well done.

Indeed.

Kevin Drum had a good post on this as well, noting that, even if it is reasonable to conclude that voting out the PP was appeasing terrorists, it is completely unfair to label Spaniards as cowards (as Wolfowitz did) since, if you believe the pre 3-11 polls (and as James aptly notes, adhere to them without regard to the MoE as if interviewing 1000 random people will give you the exact results of the election), which were apparently trending toward the Socialists, only a few percent actually changed their minds (yes, this is a moot point since it was not appeasement). These people also seem to think that terrorism is the only issue in foreign elections... it was certainly more important due to the attacks, possibly even to the extent of reversing the results otherwise, but, although I am no expert on Spanish politics, I would bet that there were other issues than Iraq and terrorism (since if there weren't the PP wouldn't have gotten 10% of the vote). Expect to see this same argument made for Bush's re-election, though: voting out Bush is admitting we have taken the wrong course and is therefore appeasement. It doesn't matter whether it actually is the wrong course, we have to send a message that we refuse to take any sort of critical view of our current administration's policies. I am afraid they are getting away with it though with respect to the Spanish elections, as the notion that lying about the terrorist attacks was the cause for a change in the results has been largely ignored. (BTW has anyone else noticed the contrast of how quickly the Spanish goverment was punished for lying about terrorism compared to the two and half years and counting we have been waiting for Americans to take a good look at what our administration has been doing?) I just hope this nonsense is shot down in the discourse leading up to out own election, although I'm afraid this is too much to ask.

That said, I have to nitpick a little since the attacks were 3-11, so it hasn't been a few weeks... I agree that it seems like it was a long time ago though... not sure why...

Didn't Chicken George cave in to Osama when he withdrew troops from Saudi Arabia? Maybe we should start mentioning that a couple of thousand times a day.

Spain is charging 4 people with the bombing. How many people have we charged for 9/11? Oh, but they're the appeasers. Right.

Well, as Mickey Kaus (yes, Mickey Kaus!) wrote recently, it's eminently possible that while al-Qaeda wants Europe to be more dovish, it wants the U.S. to be more hawkish so as to bring about a Clash of Civilizations, and it therefore wants Bush to be reelected president over here. So if the right-blogosphere is going to be intellectually consistent and honest (ha!), voting for Bush is a capitulation to the terrorists.

If right-wing politicians can't lie to the populace with impunity, the terrorists have won!

"Hey, now, baby, get into my big black car . . ."