On March 14, the Spanish people handed over their government to a Socialist Party against combating terrorism with military action and rewarded Al-Qaeda for slaughtering around 200 innocent Spaniards. Spain’s Conservative Party held a dominating lead in the polls directly before Al-Qaeda’s attack. Why did Spain elect a government committed to appeasing terrorists directly after Europe’s worst terror attack? And what does it mean for the free world’s global battle against jihadists?
Spain’s outgoing Prime Minister Aznar realized the tremendous threat that Afghanistan’s Taliban and the Butcher of Baghdad’s unaccounted-for WMD in Iraq posed to the free world. Accordingly, Spain provided troops and resources to topple the Taliban and joined the 49-nation coalition that enforced UNSC Resolution 1441 through the deployment of 1,300 troops to Iraq.
Al-Qaeda wanted Spaniards to believe that Conservative Party Prime Minister Aznar’s military support for the war against terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq represented the main reason they were bombed and consequently ousted his party from power. Spain’s electorate elected Socialist Party candidate Zapatero and acquiesced to Al-Qaeda.
In reality, terrorists attacked Spain in the context of a global battle to kill “infidels,” destroy democracy and enact a worldwide Islamic fundamentalist state. Al-Qaeda had democratic Europe in their scope for many years. French authorities foiled an Al-Qaeda plot to crash an airliner into the Eiffel Tower in 1994, well before the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The ideology that the world can fight with daisies against terrorists who seek to literally destroy us represents a naivet