I'm going to say something about the Spanish situation, but before I do let me first tell you about another story which I believe has relevance for what's going on here. Today I was dismayed at reading in a Dutch newspaper the comment of a politician on the recent murder of an Islamic woman in Holland by her husband. Apparently in many Muslim countries it is seen as the perfect right of husband to kill his wife if she doesn't obey him, and he'll even get support from the woman's own family. Death threats are seen more and more in Holland within Muslim families. Anyway, this was the suggestion of the politician: "Governent should help women receiving death threats from their husband get a new identity or move to a foreign country." This, it seems to me, is the epitome of the culture of appeasement. Surely, if women are being threatened or killed, then the appropriate action is to go after the perpetrator and punish him so severely so as to disencourage any would-be criminals to commit such crimes in future. But in the upside down world we apparently live in it's not the criminal who is to be dealt with in the case of crime, but it's the victim who should yield. This politican is proposing that we punish victimized women by banning them from their community, thus achieving the criminal's objective that there be a strong disincentive for women disobeying their men.

And so there we have it. As this example shows, terror works in our weasel society. And creating a system in which terror works creates more terror. For you get whatever you reward. And so it is for Spain. Those who would have us believe that going to fight off the oppressors in Iraq promotes terrorism got it backwards. It may be the case that Muslims would wish to seek revenge for Spain's participation in the fighting, though it's ironic that the Muslims will in fact do better with Saddam gone rather than worse, so you'd have to question the logic of the revenge theory. But that aside, being involved in a situation where the other party may commit revenge is not the same as promoting terrorism. Promoting terrorism would have to mean rewarding terrorism. And who is it who is rewarding terrorism? Aznar's party who sent troops to Iraq? No, that would count more as the opposite of a reward for terrorism. The ones who are rewarding terrorism are the voters who changed their vote from the ruling party to the socialists in response to the terrorist attack in Madrid. Those voters are the ones who are making it so that terrorism works. Terrorists commit a terrible terrorist act, and within a week they are rewarded by voters putting a party in charge that will obey the directives of the terrorists 100% by getting the troops out of Iraq.

These voters have done the whole of Europe a tremendous disservice. With this level of success for the terrorists, surely they will be inspired to act again. Who will be next? Holland? England? Well, I hope not, but it is a real possibility. Certainly they will be better targets than the US. Because if the US is attacked again, they are likely to get angry again. But if European countries are attacked they are likely to submit to the terrorist demands. And so it's the weasel mentality which promotes terrorism and not the hawk mentality.

Having said all this, I do also think that the voting result is partly Aznar's own fault. People rightly were angry that he continued to shift blame of the attacks on the ETA, even while evidence for an Arab attack was pooring in. In fact, many of us correctly put the blame on Muslims as soon as the attack happened. But still I don't think this was the overriding reason for the voters to vote the way they voted. And I think without Aznar's foul play the same would have happened. They voted the way they did because they suffer from a dangerous case of blame-the-victim mentality. Shame on them.

Henry Sturman