Spain not necessarily 'giving in'

By David Polhemus
Advertiser Editorial Writer

Conventional wisdom in Washington has it that Spain's defection from the dwindling "coalition of the willing" in Iraq is appeasement of the worst and most classic form.

That is, by giving terrorists reason to believe they can turn an entire modern nation to do their will by committing mass murder, Spaniards only encourage more of the same, and not only against themselves. Britain, Poland and the United States, by this logic, are now all the more likely to endure new acts of terrorism.

But that thinking relies on some questionable assumptions. Foremost among them is that invading Iraq has contributed to winning the war on terrorism. As the French foreign minister put it Friday, the world is a more dangerous place because of the Iraq war.

The judgment of Spanish voters, held by most since before the war began, is that Iraqi thugs and al-Qaida terrorists presented unrelated issues.

A surge in voter turnout, whipped up by a perception that the government tried to cling to power by manipulating what it knew about the perpetrators of the bombings, caused the election upset.

Spaniards have a long record of courage and resolve in facing many years of terror attacks by Basque separatists. It's a stretch to suppose the Madrid bombings suddenly turned their knees to jelly. The promise of Spain's new leader, Jose Luis Rodr’guez Zapatero, to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq doesn't mean he's not serious when he says his "most immediate priority will be to fight terrorism."

Bear in mind that before the invasion of Iraq began a year ago, there was no proven link between the radical bin Laden Islamists and the secular Saddam regime. It was only in the post-invasion chaos that al-

Qaida was enabled to establish a presence across Iraq.

Now al-Qaida has become a many-headed hydra that conducts terrorist operations even as its leaders are hiding, perhaps in Pakistan. Al-Qaida now says Iraq is the primary battleground for the war between Islam and the West. In this sense, al-Qaida seems to be capitalizing on an opportunity presented by war in Iraq.

So while most Americans still say they believe the war to oust Saddam was a crucial step in the global fight against terrorism, majorities in Germany, France and Turkey, and half of those surveyed in Britain and Russia, say they think the U.S.-led Iraq war undermined the struggle against terrorism, according to the latest Pew Research survey.

Americans have been slow to ask, as the rest of the world has: Why has Bush been so hesitant to go after the terrorists who actually attacked us? Why is he eerily passive as Iran and North Korea move steadily toward acquiring nuclear weapons? Why does he ignore Pakistan's obvious complicity in a long-running nuclear proliferation ring?

It's unseemly that the Bush administration, which says it is moving mountains to establish democracy in Iraq, condemns it when it is exercised in Spain.