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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Breaking News: Were the Terrorists appeased? French TV is running a story about explosives found along the high-speed railway link between Madrid and Seville today.
The explosives with copper wiring similar to that used in the 11 March attacks on Madrid appear to have been abandoned when a routine track patrol was made near Toledo.
N.B. Toledo was the site of two decisive battles: the first confirmed the Moorish conquest of Spain in 712, and the second was the launchpad of the Spanish Reconquistada with the Moorish defeat there in 1212. If this is the work of an Islamist cell, we have an answer to the question: “Did voting for the PSOE appease Al-Qaeda?”
The report adds that the new (Socialist) Interior Minister – responsible for law enforcement and internal security – is having a meeting today with the outgoing (conservative) Defence Minister. Bi-partisanship in Spain is about as frequent as Bible rallies in Riyadh. Nice one!
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The crocodile wasn’t satiated by the last Spanish offering. Time to feed it some more. Perhaps Spain can offer Ayman al-Zawahiri a Cabinet post?
But, but, I thought Comrade Zapatero’s promise to pull out of Iraq had appeased the Islamist gentlemen! Didn’t some nice bearded fellow tell Al-Jazeera that Spain was to enjoy a truce? What’s the world coming to when you can’t even take an Islamic terrorist at his word?
I said on Zapatero’s day of victory that Spain had chosen shame and would get war nonetheless, and it seems I was right.
I wonder if it will click in or not, and they’ll change their minds about the pull-out. Doubtful, it may take several thousand dead to wake them out of their state, I can never figure out which is worse…that people pretend that appeasement works, or that they try it; and it fails they keep doing it.
A bit off the line, I see similar in stance to people here in Canada, when Al Qadea said that we were #5 on their list of most important to kill. Everything from ‘shock’, to we didn’t do anything in Iraq….why are thy coming after us?
How do you make ‘Spanish Fly’? Ask Al Qa’aeda!
Sorry – but it’s plain the pain will be mainly in Spain.
Peaceniks please note: don’t bend over backwards to appease Al Qa’aeda; you may just as well bend over forwards. They don’t want your help, they want your blood.
Bomb found on Spanish rail track
The BBC’s Katya Adler in Madrid says Spaniards have reacted in stunned disbelief at the news of another attempted bomb attack on the railway.
This is the BBC story about the bomb. You just don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Spain will likely get a series of bombings, now that everyone knows that the Spanish will respond positively to bombings, but only if the bombs are really big.
Joel
Well… perhaps the Spanish problem is that they weren’t surrendering hard enough – especially that 48% or so who voted for the party of the right. Those bastards just clearly aren’t getting the message. Maybe the Spanish left needs to take a lesson from the French. Maybe they need to toss in a little more abject terror, a bit of hysterics thrown in; maybe if they donate some platoons of virgins or at least bags of raisins to the local radical mosque…
It is becoming clear that when Bush said “you are either with us, or against us” it wasn’t bravado; it was a statement of fact.
Rather too many ifs, I submit.
There’s also the problem of principle that using the phrase “the Terrorists” in this manner (like the idiotic “War on Terrorism”) lumps all terrorists together as if they had direct connections with one another, a coordinated strategy, and a coherent single set of goals. It is explicable that security bureaucrats and politicians should model the world that way–but Samizdatistas?
I’d invite anybody who can’t see how daft the standard rhetoric is to consider the use of the words “capitalist” and “capitalism” by many on the left to denote some monolithic purposeful monster.
Abiola – I think we were the only two who were saying that, having found out how easy Spain is, the terrorists would be back with more of the same. Other people posted saying no, they’d made their point and won it. They would move on. But I was certain they’d be back.
How many tens of thousands of years is it going to take people to learn that appeasement does not work?
Geez Guy, I dunno. The Spanish authorities are pretty sure it’s “either” Al Qaida or Ansar al Islam behind the successful attack, and the most recent bomb used the same construction methods and raw materials as the bombs of a few weeks ago.
Just to refresh your memory on a few items:
Ansar al Islam had a large training camp in Northern Iraq, staffed in part by Al Qaida core cadre.
Ansar al Islam is one of the component groups for which Al Qaida acts as an umbrella leadership element.
Ansar al Islam is functioning in Egypt, Morocco, and now apparently Spain – same as Al Qaida.
Ansar al Islam’s goals are pretty much the same as Al Qaida’s – impose a wahabbist Islamist state on all of Africa and Asia, and we’ll get to the rest of the world when we get to it. The Al Qaida leadership wants all of us to drop to our knees and convert to Wahabbism right now – so I guess their timetables are the big difference.
History teaches us that the common enemies of the West usually find common ground, and link up to fight us and the things we value. Hence the extensive ties between the Baader-Meinhof Gang (RAF); Italian Red Army Brigades, the PLO, IRA and Hezbollah through the late 70’s and 80’s. These groups actually took advantage of Hezbollah’s training facilities in Lebanon & Syria at that time. The IRA’s and RAF’s taste for Czech-made Semtex also hinted at a bit of resource sharing. (Paging Mr. Putin… Red courtesy phone.)
Presently, we know Iran is helping out Al Qaida here and there, and we know that they have long been a primary sponsor of Hezbollah. Syria sheltered the remnants of Saddam’s regime, and also serve as a staging base for Hezbollah. North Korea has been selling nuclear technology to Iran, (along with our friends who recently changed their ways in Pakistan). And our buddy Saddam, who everyone keeps saying had no ties to terrorism, as if repeating misinformation frequently enough would make it true, (1) hosted the Ansar al Islam training camps and provided cadre/liaison to the camps; (2) had his intelligence staff meet fairly regularly with Al Qaida reps; (3) served as a rest home for retired terrorists like Abu Abbas; and (4) provided 3/4ths of the indemnity funding of Palestinian suicide bombing.
So no, it isn’t a stupid, un-nuanced bureaucratic trick to link all terrorism together, especially when we are talking about the Western European reds and the Islamofascist terrorists. They have effective ties, even at the state sponsorship level. Although their operations may not be synchronized tightly, they have a common enemy in western liberal democracy, and they help each other out where it makes sense for them to do so. Some terrorist groups are distinct and as far as I know isolated for philosophical and security reasons – for example the Maoist Rote Zellen (Red Cells) and Action Directe, as well as the Animal Liberation Front (who are pikers in the terrorism world, so far). But the groups that pose a real threat to us, have demonstrated their willingness to cross-train and offer each other logistical support. It would be rather stupid to ignore this truth, in order show how nuanced and smart we all are.
Would you feel more comfortable, Guy, if Bush referred to the ongoing efforts as “the war on transnational and sporadically state sponsored terrorist organizations and their supporters?”
There’s also the problem of principle that using the phrase “the Terrorists” in this manner (like the idiotic “War on Terrorism”) lumps all terrorists together as if they had direct connections with one another, a coordinated strategy, and a coherent single set of goals.
I submit that lumping them all together is the only way to address the issue. It is the tactic of terrorism that is unacceptable, and it matters not one whit why an interest group had adopted the practice. Not unless your idea is to get at the “root causes” – i.e. find out what all the individual terrorists want and give it to them.
Coming down on any terrorist supporting any cause is the only way to prove terrorism is a bad strategy. Unfortunately, terrorism has proved a marvelous strategy in the 20th C, more often than not getting the practitioners exactly what they want (if they terrorize long and hard enough), and lending them a broody, romantic reputation to boot. It’s going to be a labor to counteract all that.
And, of course, in many cases totally unrelated terrorists causes are related. They trade with the same weapons dealers, shop for the same renegade scientists, share tips ‘n’ tricks, go to summer camp together and are funded by the same mischief-loving tyrants.
(Incidentally, did you see that Arafat and Castro are now the world’s 9th and 10th richest leaders? Way to go, despots!).
You’re both right about the myriad practical links, of course–just like all those wicked capitalists outsourcing to one another–but in my view, that is more reason not invent a monolith. Divide and conquer. Certainly don’t appease (where you have any idea what the demands are), but don’t change your policy in order to disagree with the enemy. Identify your enemy and attack its social base using both ideological and military force.
I haven’t got a good snappy name for the strategic response to low intensity threats, or these particular ones. That’s not a reason to accept whatever phrase comes to hand. Declaring war on terrorism gives credibility to terrorists by suggesting they might be as dangerous as the hostile states for which war used to be reserved and that we are frightened of them. By making your target too broad, too vague, you encourage the cooperation between all those who you might consider the enemy.
Better to say nothing than add to your opponent’s power by what you do say. The British Army in Northern Ireland never used the term “war”; the republican paramilitaries did, and also spoke about a “conflict”, which also suggested equal legitimacy. That’s why I’m also against granting too much status to Al’Qaeda as enemy-in-chief. It is plainly more than the mailing-list it started out as, but much less than when it had semi-offical bases in Afghanistan. But if we are going to have a War on something, better a War on Al’Qaeda, than a War on Terror.
Because the other trouble with War on X, where X is something invisible and endemic, is that it is hard to declare peace. If you have a war with a single organisation or known alliance, it is relatively easy (not necessarily easy, but relatively so) to tell who’s won or lost and when it is over.
Those prosecuting the war on an abstract can never win, yet always have a claim on the little more power and money they can say is needed to win. The War on Terrorism shows every sign of being like the War on Drugs: the cure won’t work and is worse than the disease. The War on Drugs gave us a bloated and intrusive police. The War on Terror is giving us a bloated and intrusive secret police.
Firstly, I believe the term “War” to be accurate and appropriate. AQ’s actions have surpassed that of civil criminality, which is how they were treated prior to Sept.11th, and those attacks have been taken as an act of war. Also where a distinction is important is that AQ’s aim isn’t clear. Do they just want the West out of the middle east and destroy Israel (as stated in the Bin Laden 98 PBS interview(Link)), or is that just the first step to Islamic revolution worldwide (as quotes such as “It is also our duty to send a call to all the people of the world to enjoy this great light and to embrace Islam and experience the happiness in Islam. Our primary mission is nothing but the furthering of this religion.”) seem to suggest? If they want to take over our countries, we have to assume it is a war. The IRA never wanted to control London, remember.
But, more importantly, calling it a war on Al-Qaeda would be a grave error. As you say, there is not one great monolith. It is a distributed network of cells lossely linked and independent of each other. If we take AQ down, we’ll still have the rest of them to contend with. Of the bomb attacks since 9/11, not too many have been directly attributed to Al-Qaeda. Mostly they were groups linked to Al-Qaeda. If Bin Laden is killed, the others will still live on and pose as much of a threat, although their PR capabilities will be hampered. I agree the “War on Terror” is a little vague, but “War on Al-Qaeda” is too specific – a more appropriate wording to me would be “War on Islamist militants”. However, that would just give the impression we wanted to destroy Islam and not help us one bit.
I’d also like to point out we already have come through a war on an invisible ideology – the war on communism aka the Cold War. Al-Qaeda is to Islamist militancy what the USSR was for Communism – the poster boys, the inspiration, and the biggest threat. But neither were all of the threat – the situation in North Korea is testament to that. But generally, we feel we have won and that it is over.
Al Maviva
Your post at 12.05pm today is the best intel exec, summary of the current scenario I’ve so far see on this blog (or any other, come to think of it). It justifies the US strategy and wipes out the Fiskian fist-fuckers. It shows historical insight. One just hopes that Bush has someone as well versed and with similar analytical skills on his staff? If not perhaps Echelon will provide him with your details. I suspect he already has them in his current staff files.
Guy
You can’t ‘divide and conquer’ a multi-headed enemy that already uses division, grouping and re-grouping as and when it suits. Internescine squabbing occurs less with fanatical religious alliances and their temporary non-religious idealistic coalitions than it does with money making conspiracies such as the various Mafia groupings, where power play, turf disputes and filched proceeds cause ructions that the authorities turn to their advantage.
But regardless of their alliances, temporary or otherwise, terrorists have to know that they will be crushed whenever and wherever they appear, by a coalition of the West and other allies of the West in the friendlier parts of the East with democratic yearnings (or at least those who want to join the capitalist club). And that coalition should be sanguine, strong and ruthless; not only with the enemy, but particularly with the ‘enemy within’ who should be hung out to dry, regardless of religious fervour, for which so many are given a pass. How to deal with the liberal, left leaning, whinging media, biting at the ankles of the vanguard is the major problem.
So far no-one has been prepared to deal with that phenomenon, because elections loom in the only countries that have the will and resources to take the fight to the enemy, viz. the USA and Great Britain.
Perhaps I really mean England rather than GB, because that seems to me to be the only part of the so called United Kingdom that is still great. And even here the creeping sickness of treason and subversion insidiously inceases by the hour. Unity is what we need. Then we will win. War has already been declared and it can’t be undeclared while the enemies are still fighting. We already made that tactical error during Iraq liberation – to please the peaceniks. The only bad mistake the Bushies have made so far, IMHO.
Al Maviva
Your post at 12.05pm today is the best intel exec. summary of the current scenario I’ve so far see on this blog (or any other, come to think of it). It justifies the US strategy and wipes out the Fiskian fist-fuckers. It shows historical insight. One just hopes that Bush has someone as well versed and with similar analytical skills on his staff? If not perhaps Echelon will provide him with your details. I suspect he already has them in his current staff files.
Guy
You can’t ‘divide and conquer’ a multi-headed enemy that already uses division, grouping and re-grouping as and when it suits. Internescine squabbing occurs less with fanatical religious alliances and their temporary non-religious idealistic coalitions than it does with money making conspiracies such as the various Mafia groupings, where power play, turf disputes and filched proceeds cause ructions that the authorities turn to their advantage.
But regardless of their alliances, temporary or otherwise, terrorists have to know that they will be crushed whenever and wherever they appear, by a coalition of the West and other allies of the West in the friendlier parts of the East with democratic yearnings (or at least those who want to join the capitalist club). And that coalition should be sanguine, strong and ruthless; not only with the enemy, but particularly with the ‘enemy within’ who should be hung out to dry, regardless of religious fervour, for which so many are given a pass. How to deal with the liberal, left leaning, whinging media, biting at the ankles of the vanguard is the major problem.
So far no-one has been prepared to deal with that phenomenon, because elections loom in the only countries that have the will and resources to take the fight to the enemy, viz. the USA and Great Britain.
Perhaps I really mean England rather than GB, because that seems to me to be the only part of the so called United Kingdom that is still great. And even here the creeping sickness of treason and subversion insidiously inceases by the hour. Unity is what we need. Then we will win; but it will take time an blood on both sides. There is no alternative and noboby on this blog has offered any reasonable alternative.
War has already been declared and it can’t be undeclared while the enemies are still fighting. We already made that tactical error during Iraq liberation – to please the peaceniks. The only bad mistake the Bushies have made so far, IMHO.
On behalf of Prince Sultan bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, I object to your innuendo that there is not complete religious freedom in Saudi Arabia. As he said in a recent article(Link), “The Saudi government “does not have a policy of religious discrimination against anyone”. I think you should apologise before you are awarded 500 lashes and decapitated in absentia
Alhamedi Alanezi
The Religious Policeman(Link)
Yes, Verity, you were quite right. Even I believed that the Islamists would leave Spain alone after they capitulated to dhimmitude. I was wrong.
Spain is now Al-Qaeda’s byatch. They will get it coming and going from now on.
Apropos of the above: apparently, today, Spanish authories are being met with explosions and shooting while hunting for Al-Qaeda cells in Madrid neighborhoods. Details to be found on DhimmiWatch (www.dhimmiwatch.org.)
So much for their miserable Munich machinations. Except this time their was no ‘piece of paper’ – just false assumptions. Looks as though they will have to withdraw their troops from Madrid, rather than Iraq, if they want to attempt further appeasement. But of course no troops were sent on this operation. It was a cop that was blown up. Perhaps they were investigating illegal immigration offences, or maybe a failure to pay a parking fine. When are they going to accept that we are at WAR?
I apologise for not following the comments in this thread for a while [I have been busy]. A couple of comments spring to mind.
Terrorists are not usually the most rational people. They can make the most stupid strategic errors. Assuming the Spanish security services did not plant the device by the railway track (that sort of thing has been done before), the result is to endorse Bush’s “either you are with us or against us line”.
If I were the boss of Al’Quaeda I would have the jerk who planted that railway line device wish he had never been born.
My suspicious mind makes me wonder if some of the explosives recovered by Spanish (or another government’s) security forces could have been placed to force the incoming Spanish government to take a stand with the War on Terrorism. Whichever scenario is true, the effect is the same. (Nice job if it was a frame up.)
I expect that Spanish troops will soon leave Iraq, but that there will be more resources made available for collaorating with international anti-terrorism operations. This is no bad thing: I think Iraq’s future is better with an American handover to a new government, rather than some wishy-washy multilateral vomit-inducing UN/NATO twaddle.
Intel is the key to this war. Parade troops from 57 nations getting sporadically shot at in Iraq is not. Give me the French and Spanish security services files on North African activists and they can keep their divisions.
Gazarides: I’d also like to point out we already have come through a war on an invisible ideology – the war on communism aka the Cold War.
The turning point of which was arguably to focus on the Soviet Union as the enemy, and make an accomodation with communist China. Communism is still around, but we stopped fighting it when it was no longer the official ideology of a serious threat. Without Soviet resources the influence of communist groups in the West is much shrunken.
I am definitely not advocating strengthening Al Qaeda by naming it as the enemy. But better that than the current route to a new and improved McCarthyism.
That’s right Guy, those who understand and deplore the ever present threat of Marxism in it’s modern modifications are the real enemy, aren’t they?
I’m plainly failing to make myself understood, even here. There’s no point.
I believe the authorities suspect the bomb was a message to Christian Spain — this time of year that train is packed with tourists and pilgrims to the Semana Santa festival of Seville.
So getting out of Iraq probably isn’t enough. Getting out of Spain may be required by al-Qaeda, believed to have the largest contingent of bin Ladenites in Europe.
Only half-joking.