SPANISH APPEASERS?….Speaking of Warmongers vs. Appeasers?, Tom Friedman’s latest column is simply revolting:
The new Spanish government’s decision to respond to the attack by Al Qaeda by going ahead with plans to pull its troops from Iraq constitutes the most dangerous moment we’ve faced since 9/11. It’s what happens when the Axis of Evil intersects with the Axis of Appeasement and the Axis of Incompetence.
….I understand that many Spanish voters felt lied to by their rightist government over who was responsible for the Madrid bombings, and therefore voted it out of office. But they should now follow that up by vowing to keep their troops in Iraq ? to make clear that in cleaning up their own democracy, they do not want to subvert the Iraqis’ attempt to build one of their own. Otherwise, the Spanish vote will not be remembered as an act of cleansing, but of appeasement.
So even though the Spanish voters elected the Socialists for perfectly good reasons completely unrelated to appeasement, and even though the Socialists were planning to withdraw from Iraq all along, and even though the Spanish populace never believed the war in Iraq had anything to do with fighting terrorism in the first place, and even though Friedman acknowledges that the Bush administration has shown demonstrable incompetence and a transparent lack of dedication to really building democracy in Iraq ? despite all that the Spaniards should change their minds and do what Tom Friedman wanted them to do all along simply because al-Qaeda committed a horrible terrorist act on their soil. If they don’t follow Tom Friedman’s advice, they are appeasers.
This is both preceded and followed by a steaming mound of wishful thinking unmatched since LBJ saw a light at the end of the tunnel.
This kind of stuff belongs on the pages of a third tier warblogger, not the op-ed page of the New York Times. It’s juvenile and disgusting.
