The Lonely Man of Europe

And to send to Blair. Spain’s new leader, the Socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, used his post-election speech to call his British counterpart, and the American president, liars–“Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush must do some reflection and self-criticism. . . . You can’t organize a war with lies.” Bush, accustomed to being called a liar by John Kerry and his party, probably took less offense than Blair, whose annoyance was increased when a top Zapatero lieutenant called him “a complete dickhead.” Still, I am told that Blair’s congratulatory call was well received. Zapatero promised Spain’s continued support for the British prime minister’s drive to reform the sclerotic European Union economy–although it is unclear how Zapatero can do this, while at the same time restoring “magnificent relations” with France and Germany (relations with the United States are to be merely “cordial”).

The media here, mostly following the BBC’s leftish slant, can’t help chortling that Labour leader Blair finds himself disappointed at the victory of a left-of-center government in Spain, and rooting for the defeat of a left-of-center candidate in the U.S. elections. The media also managed to use the Madrid tragedy as an excuse for more Bush-bashing. Joan Smith, a columnist with the Independent, somehow found in Prime Minister Aznar’s reaction to the Madrid bombings–what Europeans are calling 3/11–a contrast with Bush’s performance after 9/11. “In a televised address within hours of the murders,” she writes, “Aznar was angry but controlled, in marked contrast to the stumbling performance of George Bush after the suicide bombings of 11 September 2001.”

While on the subject of useful idiots…the chattering class’s top columnist, Sir Simon Jenkins, managed to provide Blair’s team with its only laugh of the week. In a piece prepared earlier but published in the Spectator on the day of the Madrid tragedy, Jenkins ridicules the prime minister’s fears of a terrorist attack: “Anyone who respects Western civilization would not think it ‘in mortal danger’ from gangs of Islamic fanatics. . . . Mr. Blair . . . is roaming the world in search of dragons. . . . He craves to be a war leader. But . . . this is no war.” So speak Britain’s chattering classes while their prime minister wakes up every morning hoping that today is not the day when London will become a New York, or an Istanbul, or a Bali, or a Madrid, but convinced that day will certainly come.

Blair remains under siege by members of his own party because of the failure of search teams to find weapons of mass destruction, and because he is seen by his enemies as Bush’s poodle. But once Blair decides something is “the right thing to do,” he is unmovable. As he has throughout the post-September 11 period, Blair continues to risk political oblivion by defending the moral necessity of the liberation of Iraq, and the need for preemptive strikes if the West is to prevent its way of life from being destroyed by Islamic terrorists. At his party’s conference immediately after the Madrid bombing, he repeated his position: Britain is in “mortal danger” from terrorists intent on destroying our way of life, and they must be defeated. Islamic terrorists are far more dangerous than the IRA’s death squads because the Irish terrorists had specific territorial and political demands that could be negotiated, whereas the goal of Islamic fanatics is to force Britain and the West to return to the glory days of Islam. Only surrender will suit them.

Fortunately, Blair is sufficiently eloquent, and the Brits are sufficiently sensible, that at least one poll shows a 49 percent-to-39 percent margin saying that the invasion of Iraq was a good thing to have done. As a top Blair adviser told me, “The British people don’t hide.”

Downing Street is desperately trying to convince the public that the invasion of Iraq has nothing to do with the Madrid slaughter. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw points out repeatedly that 9/11 preceded the deposing of Saddam, that Turkey was attacked even though its leaders had declined to provide a launching pad for coalition troops, and that Bali’s disco-goers were hardly preparing to volunteer for service in Iraq. Other Blair advisers note that terrorists have killed German tourists and sunk a French tanker, and that Air France planes are threatened and often cancelled, even though Gerhard Schröder and Jacques Chirac led the effort to prevent the invasion of Iraq. Islamic terrorists, in short, did not need Iraq as a pretext to kill and maim.

That separation of terrorism from the invasion of Iraq may provide the silver lining that Downing Street finds so difficult to discern in the immediate aftermath of the Madrid attack. Zapatero has consistently contended that the war on terror must be waged, but that Iraq is the wrong venue. This will allow him to withdraw his 1,300 troops on July 1, as promised–unless the U.N. provides him with an acceptable excuse to renege, which, rumor has it, he is desperately hoping will happen–and still claim credentials as a bona fide terrorist fighter. Spain will remain a member of NATO, and will cooperate with other European countries that are now planning greater coordination among themselves of E.U. terror-fighting efforts.

Meanwhile Blair is left to ponder a lonely future, one in which he is almost alone among Europe’s major leaders in wishing to stand with the United States in fighting a comprehensive war on terror. As one observer put it, referring to the famous pre-Iraq war photo of Bush, Blair, and Aznar in the Azores, we may be seeing a scenario of one down, two to go.

Irwin M. Stelzer is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, director of economic policy studies at the Hudson Institute, and a columnist for the Sunday Times (London).