MASTERMINDS
March 16, 2004

by Joe Sobran

     Jose Luis Roderigo Zapatero, Spain's new Socialist 
prime minister, promises to pull Spanish troops out of 
Iraq, blaming the American war there for provoking last 
week's terrorist bombings in Madrid. Those bombings, 
thought to be the work of al-Qaeda, gave his party its 
upset victory in Sunday's election.

     Have the Spanish voters "capitulated to terrorism," 
as many American supporters of the war charge? Or are 
they merely showing Sancho Panza's common sense against 
Don Quixote's delusions?

     Elections are package deals, and it's often a 
mistake to read too much specific meaning into them, but 
this one seems pretty clear. A decisive number of 
Spaniards have chosen to disengage from the American 
folly their previous government dragged them into.

     Opponents of the Iraq war all over the world argued 
that Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, and 
they were right. They feared that a misguided war on Iraq 
would not defeat terrorism, but provoke more of it. Right 
again.

     President Bush and Britain's prime minister, Tony 
Blair, instantly called the Madrid bombings confirmation 
of the need to carry on their war. But it was actually 
proof that their war has been worse than futile. After a 
"preemptive" war for "regime change" in Iraq, Saddam 
Hussein has been overthrown and captured. His "weapons of 
mass destruction" didn't exist; neither did his "links to 
terrorists"; and his defeat hasn't resulted in a "wave of 
democratization" in the Middle East that would bring 
terrorism to an end.

     No, it was a war for a fantasy, and with the endless 
occupation, reality is having the last word. The similar 
war on Afghanistan has also apparently failed to achieve 
what was claimed for it: a decisive disruption of 
al-Qaeda's ability to operate.

     Spain has learned the hard way the cost of following 
America's leadership: not more security, but less. It has 
gained less than nothing from the defeat of Saddam 
Hussein. Other countries will take note as they decide 
whether to act as Bush flunkeys.

     An inscrutable genie is out of the bottle. The 
impact of terrorism is greatly magnified by television; 
for a large nation, 200 deaths -- or even 3,000 -- is 
really no more than a nasty little wound. But it's enough 
to cause hysteria and topple governments, because it 
raises fears of even worse calamities. We don't know what 
to expect or how to prepare; the natural reaction to an 
invisible enemy is to overreact in every direction.

     The wars on Afghanistan and Iraq were overreactions, 
and the Madrid bombings were a mocking answer from the 
unknown enemy. They made it clear that the Bush 
administration, for all its bluster and bravado, really 
doesn't know what it's doing. Instead of speaking softly 
and carrying a big stick, it storms and rages and flails 
wildly, not knowing what to swing at.

     You're either with us or you're with the terrorists, 
Bush warned the world. So Spain joined us and got the 
terrorists. "Old Europe," angrily derided for prudently 
standing aside, must feel it made the right decision.

     After telling us this was a new kind of war, Bush 
proceeded to fight an old kind of war, against a 
centralized government under a presumed mastermind, 
Saddam Hussein. Victory was easy, except for one thing: 
Saddam wasn't the enemy. Even within his own regime he 
was a pretty derelict sort of mastermind, taken for a 
ride by his own scientists. Routing his forces, smashing 
his regime, capturing him -- all this meant nothing. The 
real enemy, dispersed and elusive, is still in business.

     And who is the mastermind, the superintending 
intelligence of the terrorists? Osama bin Laden? If he is 
caught, it will be announced as a triumphant conclusion 
-- but this is a new kind of war, against a decentralized 
federation, not a chess game where you win when you trap 
the king. It may go on indefinitely, long after Osama has 
gone to his paradisaical virgins. He couldn't call it off 
if he wanted to. It began because of American meddling in 
the Middle East, and it will go on as long as that 
meddling continues. Spain is just the latest Western 
country to realize this.

     America too has a superintending intelligence 
guiding its efforts. For the time being, unfortunately, 
the American mastermind is George W. Bush.

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