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Today's
Stories
March 18, 2004
Gary Leupp
The Madrid Bombings: the Chickens
Come Home to Roost
March 17, 2004
Marjorie Cohn
Spain, the EU and the US: War on
Terror or Civil Liberties?
David MacMichael
Untruth
and Consequences
Michael Donnelly
Wear the Green, But Skip the Green Beer
Tom Stephens
"Steady Leadership": Let the Buyer Beware
Wayne Madsen
Sen. Kerry, Let Me Help You Out
Karyn Strickler
Who Owns the Sierra Club? Anonymous Donors and Rigged Elections
Peter Linebaugh
Bush:
Blanc Blanc
March 16, 2004
Lenni Brenner
James
Madison: the Anti-Clerical Father of the Bill of Rights
Scott Boehm
Madrid
Diary: How to Change World Order in Four Days
Alexander Lynch
From Franco to Aznar: the History
Behind the Spanish Elections
Sam Hamod and Alfredo
Reyes
The Truth About the Spanish Elections: Aznar Was Going Down Anyway
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way:
Executing David Clayton Hill
Mike Whitney
The Case for a Nuclear Iran
Robert Fisk
The Bloody Price of the "War
on Terror"
Bill Christison
The
Aftershocks from Madrid
CounterPunch Photo Wire
The Passion of St. Teresa
Website of the Day
Join the War on Art!
March 15, 2004
Harry Browne
Terror Nothing New to Europe
Mike Whitney
Justice
Not Murder: the Tragic Symmetry of Terrorism
Lidice Valenzuela
Haiti: a Coup without Consultation
Greg Moses
Lessons
from the Texas Primaries: Looking for a Coalition with Legs
Mickey Z.
Depraved Indifference: C-Sections, Patriarchy & Women's Health
Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL
in New York: From Refusenik to Organizer
CounterPunch Wire
Gen. Gramajo Executed by Bees!
March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
March 11, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Bedtime
for Democracy
Bill Kauffman
Hey,
Ralph! Why Not Another Party of the People?
James Hollander
Slaughter
in Madrid: Consolidating an Ally?
Norman Solomon
They
Shoot Journalists, Don't They?
Patrick Gavin
The Salvation of Dan Quayle: Family Values Return
Becky Burgwin
You're
Messing with the Wrong Generation
John Sugg
The FBI is on My Trail
March 10, 2004
Hammond Guthrie
Read
This Book!: "Who the Hell is Stew Albert?"
Chris Floyd
Operation Enduring Sweatshop: Another
Bush Brings Hell to Haiti
Elizabeth Corrie
Remembering the Death of Rachel Corrie
Mike Whitney
US Press Torpedoes Aristide
M. Junaid Alam
An Anti-Civilizational War?
Bob Feldman
The Occupation of Haiti: Recalling 1915-1934
John L. Hess
An Overload of Crises
Gary Leupp
On Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi and the Uses of al-Qaeda "Links"
March 9, 2004
Greg Weiher
The
Zarqawi Gambit, Part 2
Ben Tripp
Word Up! Let's Have a Conversation
Tom Barry
Neo-Cons Target Syria
Sharon Smith
The Hypocrites in the Catholic Church
Robert Fisk
The Same Old Iraq
Doug Giebel
The Bush Strategy: Laughing All the Way
Ralph Nader
Pension Rights, the Trail of Broken Promises
Daniel Estulin
In Memory of Ricardo Ortega: a Great Journalist, Killed in Haiti
Dave Lindorff
Martha Stewart's Cloudy Day
Saul Landau
Will the Filthy Rich Dump Bush?
Website of the Day
Imperial Armies in the Garden
March 8, 2004
Amy Goodman
An
Interview with Aristide
Eric Ruder
An Interview
with Robert Fatton on the Coup in Haiti
Robert Jensen
The Presidential Library Terrorist
Connection
Mike Whitney
Expel the US from the Security Council
Jason Leopold
How Cheney Helped Cover Up Pakistan's
Nuclear Proliferation
Mazin Qumsiyeh
Why is Apartheid Touted as a Solution?
Kevin Alexander Gray
The Legacy of Strom Thurmond
Derek Seidman
Radical Continuity: an Interview with Paul Buhle
Steve Perry
Kerry Fiddles While He Could be Burning Bush
Website of the Day
Patriot
Act Game
March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
Robert Pollin
Remembering Paul Sweezy
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Tom Reeves
Bush's Mass Deportations: 63,000 and Counting
Charles Lewis
Who Mugged Howard Dean in Iowa:
Kerry, Torricelli and a Mysterious Frontgroup
Tom Jackson
My Breakfast with Sen. Judd Gregg
Kurt Nimmo
Is Venezuela Next?
Alan Cisco
A Report from Caracas
Jack Random
Haitian Democracy be Damned
Colin Piquette
Oh, Canada: the Coup Coalition
Lee Sustar
Labor's State of Emergency
William D. Hartung
Iraq and the Costs of War
David Sally
Rebuilding
Amérique
Mark Scaramella
When God Mooned Moses: Test Your Bible Knowledge
Mickey Z.
What We Can Learn from Ashcroft's Gallbladder
Ron Jacobs
Politics and Baseball
Dave Zirin
The Longest Jump: the Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
Poets' Basement
John Holt and Larry Kearney
Website of the Weekend
National Day of Action for Rachel Corrie
March 5, 2004
Chris Floyd
Uncle
Sugar: How the WMD Scam Put Money in Bush Family Pockets
Ron Jacobs
Chaos
Reigns: Haiti and Iraq
Lisa Viscidi
Guatemalan
Refugees: a Difficult Return
Yves Engler
Canada and the Coup in Haiti
Mike Legro
Those Bush Ads: Some Dead Bodies Are Worth More Than Others
Javier Armas
A Night of Inspiration: Oakland Benefit for Grocery Workers Strike
Bennett Hoffman
"Who Cares About Haiti, Anyway?"
Bill Christison
Faltering Neo-Cons Still Dangerous
Website of the Day
Haiti Support Group
March 4, 2004
Diane Christian
Sex
and Ideals
Sen. Robert Byrd
Stop the Stonewalling, Mr. President: Fairy Tales, Bush and the
9/11 Commission
Norman Solomon
Assuming the Right to Intervene: The US Press and Haiti
Jack Brown
A Fragrant Saga of Mexico's Greens
Hal Cranmer
The
John Kerry Experience
David Lindorff
Greenspan's Pension
Sam Smith
The Election is Over, We Lost
Christopher Brauchli
Goin'
to the Chapel: The Gay and the Dead
Brian D. Barry
The "Perfect" World of E-Voting: A Computer Scientist
Reports from the Polling Booth
Richard Oxman
Arsonists for Haiti?
Peter Phillips
Haitian
Fantasies: Mainstream Media Fails Itself, Again
Tariq Ali
Notes on Anti-Semitism, Zionism and
Palestine
Website of the Day
What If Boeing Ads Told the Truth?
March 3, 2004
Heather Williams / Karl
Laraque
Marines
Retake Haiti
Jack McCarthy
Guy's
Our Guy: "I am the Chief. My Hero is Pinochet."
Robert Sandels
The
Purloined Label: The Struggle Over the Havana Club Trademark
Juliana Fredman / James Davis
Israeli Organized Crime
JG
The Yuppie Silence on Haiti
Emilio Sardi
The
Colombia/US Free Trade Deal: It's About More Than Trade
Alan Farago
Swimming in Sewage
Mike Whitney
"Blood
Will Have Blood": 143 Murdered in Liberated Iraq
CounterPunch Wire
Nader's Legislative Record in the 1960s
Steve Perry
Kerry
Advisory: Remember Lena Guerrero
Nelson George/ Marcus Miller
Miles Davis & Hip Hop: a Conversation
Website of the Day
$10,000 Is Yours for the Taking: The USS Liberty Challenge
March 2, 2004
William Blum
If Kerry's
the Answer, What's the Question?
Conn Hallinan
Haiti:
the Dangerous Muddle
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Bravo
H-Bomb Test: One WMD They Couldn't Hide
Mike Whitney
Regime Change in Haiti: the Bush Dominos Keep Falling
Ra Ravishankar
Afghanistan, the Liberation That Isn't: an Interview with Mariam
from RAWA
Dan Bacher
Merle Haggard & the Politics of Salmon: "Clearcutting
is Rape"
Greg Moses
Oscar White
Brandy Baker
Mel Gibson's Minstrelsy Show
Little Tucker Carlson
What I Did on My Vacation
Robert Fisk
All This
Talk of Civil War, Now This
Merle Haggard
Kern River
Website of the Day
Rebel Edit
March 1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Morris
Thanks War Criminal in Front of Billions
Richard Oxman
Oscar's
Obit: Thanking Bob McNamara
Elaine Cassel
Writing and Reading as "Terrorism"
Mickey Z
Thomas Friedman's Education
Mike Whitney
George Will and Anti-Semitism: a Cul-de-Sac of Prejudice
Heather Williams
Haiti
as Target Practice: How the US Press Missed the Story
Cathy Crosson
Chanson d'amour haïtienne
Website of the Day
God Hates Shrimp
February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
February 27, 2004
Thomas C. Mountain
A
White Jesus During Black History Month?
Laura Carlsen
Americans
Abroad: Bush is Persona Non Grata
John B. Anderson
Nader's Campaign Brings Back Memories: Creating an Open Electoral
Process
Jason Leopold
Spying
on Kofi Annan
John Chuckman
Nader,
Risk and Hope
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Putin's Russia
Ray McGovern
Punished
for Honest Intelligence
Saul Landau
The
Haiti Redux
Website of the Day
Bush: Why I'm Running for Re-election
February 26, 2004
Brandy Baker
Is Nader
on to Something?
Jacques Kinau
AEI
to Colombia: "Can't Give You Anything But Guns, Baby"
Norman Solomon
Bugging Kofi Annan: UN Spying
and the Evasions of US Journalism
Greg Weiher
A Purloined Letter: the Zarqawi Gambit
Walt Brasch
Janet Jackson, Bush & No. 542: There are No Halftime Shows
in War
Shadi Hamid
The Music World Explodes in Anger
Norman Madarasz
As Canadian as Corruption
Chris Floyd
Bullets and Ballots
Virginia Tilly
The
Deeper Meaning of the Wall
Amy Goodman / Jeremy
Scahill
Haiti's
Lawyer Says US is Arming Haiti's Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
Website of the Day
Clear Channel Sucks
February 25, 2004
Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's
Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech
Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader
Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and
in Our Hearts
Mike Whitney
Bush
and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity
Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words
John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?
Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring
Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning
with Nader
Website of the Day
VotePact
February 24, 2004
Ralph Nader
Why
I'm Running for President
Greg Moses
Rally
the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Douglas O'Hara
The
Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader
Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid
Lens on Latin America
David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection
Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges
Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History
Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?
Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College
February 23, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial
at The Hague
Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"
Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada
Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader
Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance
Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"
Gary Leupp
A Misguided
Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
March
18, 2004
The Madrid Bombings
The
Chickens Come Home to Roost
By GARY LEUPP
I lived for a time in suburban
Madrid, with its bells
and its clocks and its trees
Till one morning everything blazed:
one morning bonfires
sprang out of earth
and devoured all the living
Come see the blood in the streets,
come see
the blood in the streets,
come see the blood
in the streets!
Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (Nobel Prize for Literature, 1971),
"A Few Things Explained" ("Explico algunas cosas,"
ca. 1938, trans. Ben Belitt), on how a previous Spanish government's
friendship with fascism brought blood to the streets of Madrid.
The chickens have come home to roost in Spain.
Under heavy pressure from the U.S., the Spanish government agreed
last year to participate in the war on Iraq opposed by the great
majority of Spaniards, who believed the war was both unjustifiable
and likely to increase rather than diminish terror threats. The
terror bombings in Madrid May 11, apparently intended as punishment
for the Spanish deployment, confirm the latter supposition. The
initial, apparently deliberate effort of the Aznar regime to
link them to Basque terrorists, even as the separatist
group ETA disclaimed responsibility and police found evidence
for an al-Qaeda connection, struck many as a desperate ploy of
worried (guilt-ridden?) Bush allies to conceal the attacks' connection
to the Iraq war. Ongoing opposition to the war, itself perhaps
insufficient to oust the Popular Party and bring in the Socialists,
combined with outrage at a perceived cover-up to produce the
defeat of President Jose Maria Aznar's government three days
after the bombings. Aznar's bad karma.
The chickens come home to roost in the
U.S. too---great squawking flocks of them. Scandals about prewar
lies. The embarrassingly absent weapons of mass destruction.
Scandals about reconstruction and oil contracts. The Plame Affair.
A relentless, indigenous insurgency in Iraq. Ongoing political
confusion and ethnic strife. Shiites and Sunnis alike demonstrating
for "democracy, not occupation." General lack of security,
with women and girls especially at risk. The threat of civil
war. Mounting anti-American feeling everywhere in the world.
Rising support for Osama bin Laden, now admired by a majority
of Jordanians. Plummeting popularity figures for Bush and
Cheney. $ 125 billion price tag, so far. Most of all, 571 body
bags, so far as the first year closes.
None of these fruits of the Iraq war
and occupation is terribly surprising, except, perhaps, to the
insufferably arrogant neocons, who thought they could persuade
not just the American people that a terrible threat to themselves
necessitated war on Iraq, but also convince the world that war
was necessary. Those who felt the conquest would be a cakewalk,
and the popular reception of the occupying forces would be all
flowers and cheers. Those who thought the oil revenue would pay
for the war and reconstruction, and the infrastructure would
quickly be rebuilt. Those who thought allies hesitant to support
the fight would have to accept its results, learn how unwise
it is to challenge U.S. policy, and eventually get on board the
program of U.S. empire-building, if as somewhat leery junior
partners.
Aznar's Spain was an eager supporter
of the war from early on, and in January 2003, its leader joined
those of the U.K., Italy, Poland, Denmark, Portugal, Hungary
and Czech Republic in issuing a statement declaring the "Iraqi
regime and its weapons of mass destruction constitute a clear
threat to world security." This was just around the time
that France, Germany and Belgium ("Old Europe") were
blocking a U.S. effort to supply NATO Patriot missiles and AWACs
early warning radar system to Turkey preparatory to a war the
Turks wisely decided not to support.
In both GDP and annual military expenditure,
Spain was the third most significant member on the pro-war list,
and as a nation with influence throughout the Spanish-speaking
world, its loyalty to the Bush administration was much appreciated.
Aznar was one of the quartet of leaders, along with Prime Minister
Blair, President Bush, and Portuguese Prime Minister Barroso
who issued their de facto declaration of war on Iraq in the Azores
last March.
But over three million Spaniards (out
of a population of 40 million) had taken to the streets to protest
the war a month earlier, and polls showed 80-90% opposition.
Even so, 1300 Spanish troops were sent to Iraq, the first such
deployment in memory (Spain had stayed out of both the First
and Second World Wars, although it took part in the first Gulf
War, losing one soldier out of a token force, and its air force
took part in NATO's "strategic bombing" of Kosovo in
1999). 28 of those troops were killed in a single attack in November,
when a poll showed 85% of Spaniards opposing their presence in
the country. Still, Aznar's Popular Party looked likely to win
the election before the Madrid bombing attacks. Clearly many
are blaming Aznar for exacerbating the security threat to Spain
and the world by joining in a U.S. war virtually guaranteed to
generate more hatred for the west.
Surely the new Spanish leader, Jose Luis
Rodriguez Zapatero, does. He has honestly noted that the war
is "based on a lie." "The war has been a disaster,"
he observes, and "the occupation continues to be a disaster
There must be consequences. There has been one already, the election
result. The second will be that Spanish troops will come back."
President Bush, of course, in some alarm responds that troop
withdrawal will send a "terrible message," and the
neocon pundits are already talking about "appeasement."
Just as relations with Germany and France resume a degree of
cordiality, we may expect some more frosty exchanges across the
Atlantic. House Speaker Dennis Hastert attacks the whole Spanish
nation: "a nation that succumbedto threats of terrorism,
changed their government." Criticism of Spain will be bipartisan:
occupation supporter John Kerry, whose election Zapatero openly
favors, calls on Zapatero "to reconsider his decision and
to send a message that terrorists cannot win by their acts of
terror." (Surely Kerry is aware that Zapatero advocated
withdrawal from Iraq before the bombings and election,
so it's his long-standing decision he's asked to reconsider.
And Kerry clearly implies that he buys the Bush line and believes
the occupation of Iraq is what most Europeans think it isn't:
part of the "War on Terror.")
A year after the invasion began, Germany
and France can heave deep sighs and say, "We told you so."
That's irking enough to the warmongers, coping as they must with
their own mounting internal doubts about the quagmire. But here's
Spain saying publicly: "You lied to us. You led us into
a disaster, and now we want out." That, from the neocons'
point of view, is a betrayal of, and attack upon, the common
cause. I can't see them responding to their NATO ally, "Well,
we're sorry you feel that way," and leaving it at that.
Unless the U.S. agrees to a dramatically different scenario in
Iraq amenable to Spain, involving a rapid turnover of power to
the U.N., I'd expect some very frank exchanges.
Zapatero, for example, could say this
to Mr. Bush: "You're the one sending a 'terrible
message' by attacking a country you knew damn well didn't threaten
your country, and had nothing to do with al-Qaeda. You didn't
convince many people around the world that Iraq had attacked
you on 9-11, you just convinced most of your own people, who
you notice aren't liked very much any more here in Europe, that
Saddam had to have been involved. You send a terrible
message to Arabs and Muslims that 9-11 gives you the right to
attack anybody you want, usually Muslims (people we Spaniards
know a lot about because of the centuries of Muslim rule in Spain
and our experience of colonization in the Sahara). You send a
terrible message when you say that Afghanistan (where we have
troops alongside yours, for the time being) and Iraq are 'just
the beginning' in a long war, in which you seek 'regime change'
all over the Middle East, a place you and your troops don't know
anything about. Don't you realize how happy you've made bin Laden,
by swallowing his bait and taking actions bound to antagonize
the Muslim world, splitting and weakening the western alliance,
while setting us all up for an unnecessary clash of civilizations?
Don't you realize how you're encouraging other nations, like
India, China, Russia, to act 'preemptively' and destroy the structure
of international diplomacy dating back to the seventeenth century?"
Bush's answer, I suspect, would be, "No
I don't realize any of that. We acted on the best intelligence.
The Iraqi people are free. We are promoting democracy in the
region, democracy for Muslims. If we pull out now, the terrorists
who hate our freedoms win, and will continue to threaten us with
weapons of mass destruction programs. You're either for us or
against us. We don't think the Spanish people should wait until
there's a mushroom cloud over Madrid to take action against the
terrorists" to which Zapatero, thinking, "Joder,
el tío este es un auténtico papanatas, como dijo
la señora canadiense", might ask, "Mr. President,
could you please hand the phone over to your Secretary of State?"
* * * * *
Fidel Castro has written a congratulatory
note to Zapatero---normal diplomatic etiquette. Cuba and Spain
of course have deep cultural ties and friendly relations. In
his message, Castro draws attention to other ties between Spain
and Latin America, mentioning accurately that "by virtue
of actions and pressures on the part of Mr. Aznar as president
of the government of Spain, more than 1,000 young men from small
and impoverished Latin American nations were sent as cannon fodder
to Iraq under the command of the Spanish Legion," so that
"the possible death of any of those young people is the
responsibility of the Spanish state." He urges Zapatero
to do what he can to prevent the "death of any one of those
young Salvadorans, Hondurans, Dominicans and Nicaraguans"
so far sent.
Honduras has already announced it will
follow Spain's lead and withdraw its 370 troops by June. Let
us say El Salvador, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic follow
suite. Won't Zapatero be blamed for plucking off each little
"Coalition" fig leaf? John Bolton has long averred
that Cuba is part of an expanded "axis of evil;" will
the axis come to include Spain as well? (Here's the spin: Socialist
Spain, linked to terror-sponsoring communist Cuba, is aiding
al-Qaeda by appeasement, meddling in the Caribbean, attempting
to split Latin American countries from the U.S. in the War on
Terror, and by embracing Franco-German anti-Americanism weakening
NATO.)
Now let us suppose that the population
of Italy, as opposed to the war as the Spanish, but dragooned
into it by the government of Silvio Berlusconi (Italy's richest
man, sometimes Mussolini defender, who controls three private
television stations and the nation's largest publishing house,
a man facing bribery charges which because of a law he pushed
through last June cannot be prosecuted while he remains in office),
is inspired by its fellow Latins to resist the war, effect regime
change in Rome, and pull out the 3000 Italian troops as well.
A La Repubblica poll shows two-thirds of Italians wanting
the troops brought home in the absence of U.N. authorization
for their presence. The European Parliament elections in June
could crucially undermine Berlusconi, maybe even force a withdrawal.
It would then be hard for the 2400 Poles,
2000 Ukrainians, and 1100 Dutch to stay in, and certainly hard
for Portugal's 120 troops, and the token Japanese, Estonian,
Croatian, Kazakh and other mercenary detachments who hate the
bloody streets of Iraq and fear blood in their streets back home.
The U.S. forces would be left alone by mid-summer on the so-called
"central battlefield in the War on Terrorism," holding
the bag of unilaterialism, possibly just accompanied by the Brits.
Maybe not even them. The Coalition of the Willing will be exposed
for what it is: an ad-hoc band of the bribed and bullied crumbling
like mercenaries often do when the work no longer pays. The American
people if they hadn't figured it out already would have to wonder
why the world has become so soured on the Bushite vision of "Iraqi
Freedom."
Meanwhile, the House of Representatives
discusses the awarding of another medal to the deposed Aznar,
who has "committed blood and treasure to both Afghanistan
and Iraq, where Spanish forces continue to serve alongside our
own." I wonder if this will enhance Aznar's reputation among
his compatriots.
* * * * *
Yo vivía en un barrio
de Madrid, con campanas,
con relojes, con árboles.
Y una mañana todo estaba ardiendo
y una mañana las hogueras
salían de la tierra
devorando seres
Venid a ver la sangre por las calles,
venid a ver
la sangre por las calles,
venid a ver la sangre
por las calles!
Gary Leupp
is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor
of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants,
Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa, Japan;
Male
Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa, Japan;
and Interracial
Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900.
He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
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