The World Can’t Wait

Condescending, maniacal, and beneath contempt, Zapatero (and his world view) managed to accomplish nothing substantive on the world stage since he entered office. It seems that his first grand policy move, conceived in fear (the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq after the Madrid train bombings,) did little other than embolden a then otherwise apprehensive ETA.

By October of this year we will hold an early general election.” Instead, the pessimists got it right. Mr Zapatero appeared on television all right, after the shocking announcement by men in masks. All he said, in an tortured interview with his friend Iñaki Gabilondo on La Cuatro was that everyone should unite with him, including the Popular Party, in the fight against terrorism. He is quite right, but under what terms? And should not tomorrow’s crucial meeting take place in Congress, not in the privacy of the President’s drawing room?

Behold the horror:

after ZP won the general election in 2004 following the Atocha atrocities, he decided to present himself to the world as Blair had done in Britain – as the Great Peacemaker. Blair and his group had won the peace in Ulster, and ZP was going to do even better in the Basque Country – by hook or by crook. No-one, and especially no political party, would be allowed to block this crusade. If the chief opposition party found the peace process potentially explosive, or farcical, or a devilishly clever means by which ETA could recover from its then crippled and bankrupt state, and made this view public knowledge – then ZP and his companions would denounce the chief opposition party. They would be hounded in the socialist media, and on the Government-owned TV channels. They would be turned into an ogre by the Administration’s spokespeople. We would be taught to hate the Partido Popular.

In effect, it was a direct reward for the violence of ETA and al Queda. And it gets better and better for them.

Mr Rajoy will remind Mr Zapatero that without consulting the PP, or even seeking a bit of advice, he instructed Mr. Eguiguren in the Basque Country to make contact with ETA leaders, in order to bid them to secret meetings that the rest of Spain would know nothing of. Rajoy will gently remind Mr Zapatero that after due compromises had been made (which have come to be revealed after all) the terrorist band would declare (on 22 March, 2006) a truce and a ‘permanent ceasefire’; that ETA’s wish to become an international issue had been granted, by becoming part of the European Union’s agenda; that despite innumerable huge public demonstrations against Mr Zapatero’s dreamed-of peace process taking place across Spain and in its capital, he continued making concessions as if the contrary opinion of at least 50% of the population counted for nothing at all.

Rajoy can mention that when ETA felt the Government had not fulfilled all its promises made to them, they ignored the truce for a moment and blew up the carpark at T4, Barajas, incidentally killing two innocent bystanders; that after this atrocity, instead of shutting the book and concentrating on the demolition of ETA, Mr Zapatero carried on with the compromises and the promises made under the counter with the terrorist band; that Mr Zapatero’s faithful judges released a convicted criminal (De Juana Chaos) who had personally dispatched innocent men and women to another world in the name of politics, because he went on a hunger strike in jail.

A shining success, that great Socialist demonstration of solidarity and valor, yes? Against the wishes of an angered population, he sent someone to negotiate with ETA. All just to try to prove something to Blair and to the world that he would make some sort of great last stand for the euro-party of the euro-roses. Somewhere. Anywhere. Trying to prove positve something about itself, yet failing.