The Price of Appeasement

Lee Harris suggests a thought experiment in Tech Central Station.

Suppose that last week’s attack had not been the work of terrorists, but the work of the United States. Suppose American jets had flown over Madrid on Thursday morning and dropped a scattering of bombs on the commuter trains, killing and maiming the exact same people who were killed and maimed in the terrorist’s attack. Suppose, further, that President Bush had subsequently announced that Spain would be subjected to further attacks if the Spanish voters did not vote as he wished them to vote.
Had the Spanish people docilely obeyed such a brutal command, and voted as the United States bid them vote, the world would be left in no doubt who really ruled Spain. The election would have clearly been understood as an act of collective capitulation and an abject abandonment of all claims to national sovereignty. Henceforth Spain, with good reason, would have been looked upon as a puppet state of the USA — in the exact same way that Soviet tanks in the streets of Prague in 1967 proved to the world who really ruled the Democratic Republic of Czechoslovakia.

This is imperfect, of course. Al Qaeda did not issue a demand that Spain vote a certain way. Perhaps they didn’t think they needed to.

MADRID, Spain (CNN) — A document published months before national elections reveals al Qaeda planned to separate Spain from its allies by carrying out terror attacks.
A December posting on an Internet message board used by al Qaeda and its sympathizers and obtained by CNN, spells out a plan to topple the pro-U.S. government.
“We think the Spanish government will not stand more than two blows, or three at the most, before it will be forced to withdraw because of the public pressure on it,” the al Qaeda document says.
“If its forces remain after these blows, the victory of the Socialist Party will be almost guaranteed — and the withdrawal of Spanish forces will be on its campaign manifesto.”
That prediction came to fruition in elections Sunday, with the Socialists unseating the Popular Party three days after near-simultaneous bombings of four trains killed 200 and shocked the nation.

(I’d like to add, as a post-script, that I do not agree with the conclusions drawn in Lee Harris’s article. The man is often brilliant, but he’s far too gloomy for me today. I still think the excerpted paragraphs are worth thinking about, however.)