Monday, 15 March 2004

Our sincere condolences, you filthy appeasing bastards: Right-wing crocodile tears for Spain appear to have dried up suddenly now that the election results are in and the Bushistas are on the way out. In less than 72 hours Glenn Reynolds went from sending flowers to the Spanish Embassy to the hyperbolic "Terrorists have succeeded in toppling the Spanish government." Never mind that outgoing PM Jose Maria Aznar and his right-wing Popular Party failed to prevent the March 11 terrorist attacks, played politics with the investigation, and attempted to deliberately mislead the Spanish people: The right wing's moral for this story is that Spain Has Cried Uncle and they're now part of Old Europe again.

Looking at the world through black-and-white glasses does save the Right a lot of time and effort: They can quickly divide the world into two opposing camps labelled "With Us" and "With The Terrorists," and categorize everyone with ease. Pakistan is With Us. France is With The Terrorists. Democrats, if not actual card-carrying Al Qaeda members, are clearly With The Terrorists. And Spain, by virtue of holding a free and fair election which the right-wing party did not win, has just switched sides and joined the League of Chickens. An entire Spanish election reduces to a straight-up referendum on whether to fight terrorism or appease it, and the only possible way to decide your vote is to ask "What Would Osama Do?" and then pull the other lever.

(Meanwhile, Pakistan is supplying nuclear do-it-yourself kits to Iran and North Korea, and Saudi Arabia is pumping money into the terrorist support network — but the Right's either-or framework doesn't know how to handle those problems, so under the rug they go.)

The problem with the Right is that they like the sound of democracy, but they don't actually want to participate in one. There's too much risk that the people might make the wrong decision, and it's way too hard to win debates and build coalitions and make compromises and put a convincing case to the people. It's much easier to cut a few corners, and blame a terrorist attack on a politically convenient scapegoat — or to spice up the case for a pre-emptive war in Iraq by throwing in a few groundless 9/11 allegations.

Spain's elections may be grim foreshadowing for the Bush Administration, but they're a victory for the concept of honest, accountable government. Spanish voters might have been willing to forgive and forget that Aznar sent troops to a war they opposed — but when he tried to hide the facts about the March 11 bombings, they turned his party out of office. Bush and his supporters would do well to learn that moral, instead of blindly lamenting that Spain has departed from the path of the righteous.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 12:51 pm. comments.