18 March 2004
A Cowardly Measure of Control
The Spanish populace has fallen dangerously into a conspiracy with international religious fundamentalists that attempts to control the unilateralism of the world’s sole superpower with terror. If the Jihadist radicals are to be believed, their objective is to eliminate the stranglehold on the expression of their beliefs that is held by America and its Western materialist dependencies. It is easier for them to create this change through terror than through the procedures characteristic of liberal democracies (elections, transparent policy formulation, etc.). Those procedures are the same ones that govern the operation of the U.N. They are also the procedures that have ruled Spain’s political culture since the fall of Franco.
The effect of terror in Spain, and in Iraq, has been to make it more costly in personal terms to defend the tenets of liberal democracy. This is precisely the purpose that Islamist radicals seek to achieve. Unfortunately, it is easier for Spanish citizens, not to mention U.N. officials, to rely on exogenous agents to control the perceived transgressions of the world’s superpower than to engage in the hard work of strategic, economic, or public diplomacy.
The same is true, of course, for domestic opponents of unilateralism in America’s foreign policy. It is lot more dignified to dedicate resources and hard work to changing the political direction of the country than to abandon our liberal democratic principles in the face of arm-twisting by a band of uncivilized nihilists.
The Spanish populace has fallen dangerously into a conspiracy with international religious fundamentalists that attempts to control the unilateralism of the world’s sole superpower with terror. If the Jihadist radicals are to be believed, their objective is to eliminate the stranglehold on the expression of their beliefs that is held by America and its Western materialist dependencies. It is easier for them to create this change through terror than through the procedures characteristic of liberal democracies (elections, transparent policy formulation, etc.). Those procedures are the same ones that govern the operation of the U.N. They are also the procedures that have ruled Spain’s political culture since the fall of Franco.
The effect of terror in Spain, and in Iraq, has been to make it more costly in personal terms to defend the tenets of liberal democracy. This is precisely the purpose that Islamist radicals seek to achieve. Unfortunately, it is easier for Spanish citizens, not to mention U.N. officials, to rely on exogenous agents to control the perceived transgressions of the world’s superpower than to engage in the hard work of strategic, economic, or public diplomacy.
The same is true, of course, for domestic opponents of unilateralism in America’s foreign policy. It is lot more dignified to dedicate resources and hard work to changing the political direction of the country than to abandon our liberal democratic principles in the face of arm-twisting by a band of uncivilized nihilists.
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