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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
March 14, 2004
Spain votes
Spain is undergoing a test today -- a national election in the shadow of the horrific attacks on Madrid's commuter rail system that killed or maimed many hundred people. I was impressed by the resolution of everyone from King Juan Carlos down to proceed with the election regardless of the atrocity. We must never give terrorists the satisfaction of disturbing the constitutional order except insofar as it is necessary to find and eliminate their threat to it. It is the same thing with a person who has received a plausible anonymous death threat. One must get on with one's life. One must be brave not go into hiding. One must refuse to be silenced by intimidation. But at the same time one must take whatever practical precautions suggest themselves given the nature of the threat: bodyguards if you can afford them weapons training and a gun if you live in a country where the state still allows its citizens to defend themselves. (Sadly Canada is no longer such a country.) Nations and individuals are not strictly comparable morally or otherwise. The state has obligations no individual can assume and vice versa. An individual in his freedom may choose to "turn the other cheek" on his own behalf but has no right to do this on behalf of another. The state has no right at all to behave as if its purpose were the achievement of individual sanctity. It has the most solemn moral and ethical responsibility to act in defence of public order and against any threat to it. No legitimate state may affect a neutral position between the law-abiding and outlaws. And yet there are useful analogies between the individual and the state and it is in threats to life and limb -- in the question of what is necessary to survival -- that we may view the state through the prism of the individual. Survival is elemental. You do not agree passively to be put to death except in the most extraordinary circumstances (criminal condemnation or in witness to Christ). Likewise a state does not agree passively to be overthrown. As the guardian of civilization itself the legitimate state must do what is necessary to defend itself and protect its people -- and no less. This is its raison d'etre. It is amazing that it is necessary to say this today to explain realities old as the hills; but for nearly two generations instructors in our pathetic public schools have been teaching children there is no such thing as an "enemy". The truth in our bones asserts the contrary. If the civilized will not defend themselves barbarism will prevail. At the time I write the Spanish authorities are in some doubt who was behind the Madrid bombings. The predisposition of Spanish politicians was to blame the Basque ETA but all the symbolism and paraphernalia of the bombings pointed to the international Jihad. Those familiar with the workings of Al Qaeda and associates were in no doubt about the authorship of the carnage -- though it is quite possible the Jihadists had help from one or more ETA cells for terrorists tend to be linked less as networks than as a web by common interests in robbery drug smuggling and the procurement of weapons. The Basques condemned the Jihadists exulted in this case. Cui bono? The Basque separatist cause is damaged by the bombings the international Jihad is enhanced. Yet ultimately there is nothing to choose between them. Both movements employ terror to make political statements and if the Basque ETA is more partial to assassinations and Al Qaeda to random massacres it is a mere question of taste. Both organizations must be annihilated to the last man. This is axiomatic. There is nothing to discuss with the perpetrators of such violence. They live and die by the sword. Spain's test will be completed in the election itself where dealing with terrorism both domestically and internationally has been the major campaign issue. The government of the retiring prime minister Jose Maria Aznar firmly allied with President Bush's "coalition of the willing" in Iraq and elsewhere and dead-set against concessions to Basque and Catalonian separatists at home must win decisively. The Socialist opposition led by Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero which has played childish rhetorical games comparing Aznar to Franco and associating the defence of civilization itself with "fascism" deserves the punishment of electoral humiliation. Spain must show old Europe that it has not gone soft in the head. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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