John Mauldin hat das Wort!

verfasst von Emerald, 20.03.2004, 06:15

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Zapatero was not the only politician to make such a connection between Bush
and the al Qaeda bombing."Former Democratic presidential candidate Howard
Dean said Tuesday that President Bush's decision to send troops to Iraq
appears to have contributed to the bombing deaths of 201 in Spain.”(The New
Hampshire Union Leader)

Stratfor, my favorite source for geo-political intelligence, had these very
powerful thoughts on the election (www.stratfor.com):"The majority of
Spaniards opposed the U.S. intervention in Iraq and Spain's participation
in the war. Nevertheless, the Popular Party government that chose to
support the war was, according to polls a week before the March 14
election, going to win. The peculiarity of a government following an
unpopular foreign policy yet remaining likely to win is easy to explain:
There were many other issues on the table, and the voters were not being
driven to their decisions by Iraq. Issues such as Franco-German domination
of the European Union were more important than the Iraq war.

"The attack on the Madrid train stations changed that. Perfectly timed to
be absorbed into the Spanish electorate's psyche, it was designed to
demonstrate the price that Spain would be forced to pay for its Iraq
policy. What was a less-than-decisive issue for voters March 10 became the
defining issue by March 12. The electorate, unhappy with the war in Iraq
anyway, now saw themselves paying a price for the war that was simply too
high. They voted the Popular Party out and the Socialists in. The
Socialists pledged to withdraw Spain's troops from Iraq by June 30.

"From a strategic perspective, this is a massive al Qaeda victory. With one
blow, it knocked a major U.S. ally out of the Iraq campaign and raised
serious questions as to how far Spain will go to support the United States
elsewhere. There can be no question but that al Qaeda understood what it
was doing. It struck on the eve of the election in a manner that was
clearly intended to cause maximum casualties. When viewed from the
standpoint of total casualties (as opposed to total dead), the Madrid
attack was almost half as devastating as Sept. 11. But in this case, rather
than increasing Spain's aggressiveness as Sept. 11 did with the United
States, it caused Spain to draw back.

"The attack has enormous political implications. There are a number of
countries that supported the United States in Iraq in the face of majority
popular opposition to the war. These countries have political dynamics
similar to Spain's. They include Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Poland,
Hungary, Australia and Japan. Their governments managed the politics of the
war in ways similar to Spain. Each of these governments is highly
vulnerable to the kind of attack carried out in Madrid."

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• John Mauldin hat das Wort! - Emerald, 20.03.2004, 06:15