Spain to terrorists: You win
Spain’s new leader has vowed to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq:
Spain’s new Socialist leader vowed Monday to bring home the 1,300 Spanish troops now in Iraq, a move that follows the worst terrorist attack to hit the U.S. ally.
“The Iraq war has been disastrous. It was a mistake,” Socialist leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero told reporters in his first news conference after his party defeated conservatives in Sunday’s elections.
The drastic shift in Spain’s presence in Iraq comes after a series of terrorist bombings Thursday on commuter trains in Madrid that killed 200 people and wounded some 1,500, 243 of whom remain hospitalized.
That’s disheartening merely because of the precedent it sets.
March 15th, 2004 at 10:03 am
I’m not ready to condemn the move just yet. The guy is newly elected: is pulling out of Iraq part of the platform on which he ran? If it is, then this move isn’t necessarily in reaction to Spain’s terrorist bombings.
And frankly, if he’s pulling the troops to concentrate more resources where the terrorists actually are, then that would have to be viewed as a good move. I’m reserving judgment on this.
March 15th, 2004 at 10:47 am
Aside from your strategic references, the appearance of being cowardly will only encourage such behavior.
March 15th, 2004 at 10:58 am
My question is how long it will take for Spain to move, in John Kerry’s eyes, from Member of Fraudulent Coalition to Bellweather of World Opinion?
March 15th, 2004 at 1:27 pm
Maybe Spain has finally decided to fight al Qaeda and is sending its troops to go capture “wanted dead or alive” bin Laden.
March 15th, 2004 at 2:33 pm
On this one, Yglesias gets it right.
March 15th, 2004 at 2:55 pm
As I understand it, it was a part of the Socialist party’s platform. However, before the blast, the Popular Party was slightly ahead in the polls, so the conventional wisdom is that the Socialist’s promise of removing the troops was the reason that the election swung.
Having said that, Spain by no means is soft on terror from either party. They certainly aren’t soft when it comes to ETA. And IIRC, Spain has troops in Afghanistan and I have not heard any rumblings of those troops being recalled.
The reality is this..if you are going to go into a war of any kind, you have to have the people behind you who are willing to sustain casualties. Aznar simply didn’t. The polls were like 80%-90% against war in Iraq. Something similar happened with Vietnam…the sight of body bags helped convince the public that they should get out.
March 18th, 2004 at 4:06 am
Im from Spain.
You dont cut & paste that the president said that his first goal was stopping the terrorism. People did not vote for the socialist party because of fear, but because all the lies from the government.
The reason for the result of the election, was the handling of post 11-M. They were blaming ETA, while evidences that Al Qaeda was responsible where surfacing from Spanish and international press. Everybody felt our government was lying and using the 200 death, for his own purpose…