Today, when they cast their votes at the Spanish General Election, the voters are reportedly split on what lesson to draw from the fact that Al Quaeda has now committed mass murder on Spanish soil. Will their reaction be:
- ‘He was right: global terrorism is a serious danger that we must fight’; or
- ‘If we hadn't fought them, they would not have attacked us.’
Which is true? Well, both of them have been stated in a way that disguises a moral judgement as a pragmatic one. For in fact, to those who are in moral agreement with the terrorists' objective, global terrorism is not a serious danger but only a tiny additional risk in their lives, a price well worth paying to create a world worth living in. And to those who value a way of life that is incompatible with the world that the terrorists are trying to create, it is simply false that ‘they would not have attacked us’, for they already have attacked us, many times.
So the Spanish voters do have to choose which way to jump on this issue. But it's not a question of whether the recent attack tends to vindicate or refute Prime Minister Aznar's pro-Coalition stance in the war. It is whether they believe that our society is better than the one the terrorists are fighting for, or not.
Update:“…we seem to be very near the bleak choice between War and Shame. My feeling is that we shall choose Shame, and then have War thrown in a little later, on even more adverse terms than at present” – Winston Churchill in 1938. He was right on all counts, and that was Britain's moment of greatest shame. Today the Spanish people were given the choice between war and shame. They too chose shame. They too will get war. This is the most disgraceful moment for the Spanish nation since 1936 – or perhaps 1492.
