LONDON, 18 March 2004 — If it is true that Al-Qaeda was responsible for last week’s attacks in Madrid then the Spanish electorate has just introduced a new card in this war against terrorism — a card which, when played, gives Al-Qaeda an unforeseen power over Western governments.
Battles and wars are fought for power. Sometimes the way to achieve that power is by conquering wealth or land belonging to the enemy and exerting influence by using that wealth or land (Israel does this with the Palestinians).
Sometimes power is gained by neutralizing or diminishing the power of a rival country (as we saw the European countries do in World War II) while other battles are fought to dismantle rival ideologies (the Cold War is an example of competing ideologies that led to the demise of the Soviet Union). The war on terrorism is proving to be one of opposing ideologies and cultures.
The first mistake the West made in relation to Al-Qaeda was the declaration of a “war against terrorism” — the operative word here being “war”. When you declare war on someone you are essentially inviting him or her to fight back. We all learned about this in the playground. If on the other hand, there had been no mention of the word “war” things may have been significantly different.
We could have said it was a moral and legal requirement to bring the perpetrators of Sept. 11 to justice, a security obligation to prevent further attacks on innocent people and a global objective to combat terrorist networks across the world. We could have spent billions of dollars, not on death and destruction in Afghanistan and Iraq, but on security and peacekeeping in Bali, Casablanca, Istanbul and Madrid.
Not only have we now gotten ourselves in a war with a fearless enemy, we are now losing that war by proving that our strategies for winning were not only unjust but also hugely unpopular. Those countries that stood by the United States in its illegal war against Iraq — a war initiated as part of the war on terrorism — are now facing consequences that are forcing them to reconsider whether it was worth all this trouble. Yes, the victims are mostly innocent civilians who had almost nothing to do with decisions to go to war but there has always been a message in Al-Qaeda attacks. In Bali the message went out to Australian tourists and the American Consulate, in Istanbul the recipients were British diplomats and the commercial world. Has our Britain’s support for the war led to great division in society? Are we creating an enemy within?
When the Spanish electorate surprisingly voted against Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar in last Sunday’s election it launched a withering attack on his support for the war and Spain’s military presence in Iraq. It encouraged critics of George Bush and Tony Blair to once again question the legitimacy and success of the war in Iraq. When an attack comes closer to home, and when we lose our family, friends and countrymen in a split-second blast, we cannot help reviewing our leaders’ policies and our support for them.
With Tony Blair’s second term in office already stricken with crisis over Iraq, Hutton, Clair Short and British intelligence, can an Al-Qaeda attack on Britain prove the last straw on the camel’s back? One newspaper asked whether British voters would be any braver than the Spaniards. As old-fashioned as it may sound, bravery is in realizing and admitting mistakes and then being able to learn and to move on from them. Voting for Labour in the next elections will not be a brave act — nor would voting against them, after all the Conservative Party were in support of the war just as much as the government.
In Britain the question is not over which party we vote for in the next election or whether a new government would withdraw troops from Iraq as Spain’s leader José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has done. The aim lies in facing the facts. If Tony Blair can admit that the war in Iraq has increased terrorism and decreased safety in Britain he might still be able to save what is left of his political career. We should applaud Spain for not being afraid of change.
