Tuesday March 16, 2004

DON'T BELIEVE THE SNIPE. From the Basque paper Berria on the incoming Spanish prime minister:

As Zapatero said, his first objective will be "to call on all the parties to fight against all kinds of terrorism." From the start of the campaign he stressed that there was "a need to restore unity and consensus in the antiterrorist sphere," and that it was also necessary to prevent that sphere from turning into a source of tension...

Zapatero yesterday confirmed his "commitment" to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq before July 1, but stressed that this plan had existed before the Madrid attacks. "The intervention and occupation of Iraq has been a huge disaster. Spanish troops will return [from Iraq]."

"Tony Blair and George Bush will need to engage in some reflection and self-criticism; you can't bomb a country just in case; you can't wage war with lies."

Zapatero may be prevaricating, greatly or slightly, but I thought you might want to hear some of his actual words, rather than subsisting on the simple characterizations of cowardice and pro-terrorism applied to him and the whole Spanish nation by the more simple-minded among us.

Definitely not one of the simple-minded is Ezra of Pandagon, who floats the idea that "a terrorist attack delays an election by two months automatically." Though I admire his seriousness, I must disagree.

Remember the first post-9/11 New York mayoral election? That almost didn't happen as scheduled. After the attacks, the thugs Murdoch and Giuliani tried to get the election postponed in the interests of "order," leaving Giuliani as some sort of extra-democratic ruler for a period of time ("three months, or six, or 12," proposed the Post) till who knows what authority considered the coast clear for democracy.

The Democratic primary had been delayed for purely functional reasons (it had been scheduled for September 11), so Giuliani summoned the chief combatants, Mark Green and Fernando Ferrer, and told them the deal. Green, the schmuck, was willing to go for it; but Ferrer, bless him, told Rudy to stuff it. He was the least powerful man in the room, but he said that the will of the people should prevail despite the near occasion of terror.

And you know what? He was right. He was so right that he got his way, despite the awesome power arrayed against him.

We got a shitty mayor out of that election, true, but what a blow our souls would have suffered had we decided (or allowed others to decide for us) that any times are too perilous for democracy.

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