Like many kossacks, I am surprised and deeply disturbed by the Spain-bashing taking place in the American press. I am dismayed that David Brooks can proclaim, without a hint of irony, that the Spanish people should have postponed their elections rather than surprise the pollsters and pundits. And, like many of you, I am waiting to hear from our nominee. In the meantime, let's make our voices heard and turn the narrative around
NOW, before it's too late.
Today, when you write to your local paper, your congresscritter, your friends and neighbors, here are a few memes you can help to "transmit into the mainstream."
- If the elections had been postponed, it would have been an even greater victory for AQ. If, indeed, "they hate our freedom," then what better way to fight back than to exercise the most fundamental freedom the western world provides - the freeedom to choose who governs us.
- Surprising results are not uncommon in democracy and are in fact an indication that the system is working properly (insert your favorite example here).
- When government thwarts the will of the people, it is the peoples' right and duty to elect someone else. Since the Aznar administration took Spain into Iraq against the will of the vast majority of its constituency, then failed to protect them from the terrorist threat which was a direct result of that action, then sought to blame the attack on ETA when it already knew that AQ was responsible, why is it so surprising that they were voted out? (That work stoppage was almost exactly a year ago BTW, and note the poll figures.)
- We cannot condemn the Spanish people for choosing a party which has promised to prevent terror attacks over a party which has not only failed to prevent terror attacks, but has encouraged them by devoting its resources to attacking Iraq rather than AQ. The Spanish people have decided that Zapatero, far from being soft on terror, may well pose a greater threat to AQ than Aznar ever did. Just as it was our decision to attack Iraq rather than concentrating on AQ, this is their decision, not ours.
- What does it say about the way that the US has conducted its war on terror, when the people of Spain choose overwhlemingly to pursue a different approach? What does it say about our standing in the world when a close alliance with the US becomes a political liability? By pretending that this was cowardice on the part of the people of Spain we fail to ask ourselves the difficult but crucial question of whether what we are doing is actually working.
- If this happened in the US, would you rather that we postponed the elections, or that we went ahead and held them regardless? What about if there were a natural disaster of a similiar scale rather than a man-made one? Should we postpone our national elections whenever there's a string of tornados in Illinois or a chemical factory explosion in Louisiana? Why not?
Please use caution with the last two especially. It's all too easy for people to shut down and retreat into knee-jerk nationalism when confronted with things like that, as Mr. Brooks has so helpfully demonstrated.