Bush administration neoconservatives try to force the political meaning of Spain's 3/11 into an ill-fitting 9/11 template.
When the terrorist bombs exploded at the Atocha train station in Madrid, Spain, on March 11, a date that resonated like a depth charge as a European 9/11, politics on both sides of the Atlantic were thrown into turmoil. The ruling conservative Popular Party in Spain and the Bush administration instantly staked the Spanish election on the presumed identity of the terrorists. The Spanish government had supported Bush's war in Iraq in his "coalition of the willing" against the overwhelming opposition of Spanish public opinion. March 11, therefore, must not be Sept. 11, at least not exactly. The culprits must be ETA, the Basque separatists, not al-Qaida. Prime Minister José María Aznar repeatedly called Spanish newspapers to insist that ETA was responsible. Within hours of the attack, President Bush and Secretary of State Powell helpfully pointed their fingers at ETA. There was no mention of al-Qaida at the White House.
A day before the election, however, alleged terrorists linked to al-Qaida were arrested. The credibility of the government was in tatters and it suffered a shattering defeat. March 11's explosions had revealed the barely buried history of Franco's relentless political exploitation of terror to sustain his power. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the new Socialist prime minister, immediately pledged his commitment to the war on terror, while calling the war in Iraq a "disaster," and, for good measure, announcing, "I want Kerry to win." John Kerry, for his part, called for Zapatero to reconsider his decision to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq. Each of their statements reflected the complex reconfiguring of politics after March 11. The crisis in the Western alliance, prompted in reaction to Bush, is a new peril to be navigated by Kerry.
On the eve of the Spanish election, Bush's first wave of campaign spots on television had failed. He launched his effort by wrapping himself in 9/11, featuring a flag-draped coffin at ground zero. By more than a 2-1 majority voters felt the ad was inappropriate and Bush hastily withdrew it. He replaced it with a more menacing commercial. The ad claimed (falsely) that Kerry had a plan to raise taxes by $900 billion. Pictures of working women were flashed on the screen. Hidden message: Kerry would harm women. Then came a triptych of rapid images: a U.S. soldier (was he patrolling in Iraq?), a young man looking over his shoulder running down a city street at night (was he a mugger or escaping an attack?) and a close-up of the darting eyes of a swarthy man (was he a terrorist?). The voice-over: Kerry would "weaken America." The images -- abstract, racial and subliminal -- were intended to play upon irrational fear. A Bush spokesman explained that the generic olive-skinned figure was a hired actor and that he wasn't an Arab. Through this literal-mindedness the Bush campaign tried to deflect criticism as it sought to implant apprehension about Kerry.
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http://salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2004/03/18/spain/index.html
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