By Mathew Maavak
Madrid would have been in a state of ecstasy just before that carnage on March 11. The greatest soccer club on earth, Real Madrid had just defeated its only true rival in Bayern Munich in an epic European Champions League encounter.
To appreciate this seeming trivia, especially where Americans are concerned, one must know that a one-time slum boy called Pele will always be more famous than any Brazilian president. He is more known throughout the world than heads of state. Football, or soccer as it is called in the United States, is an irrational game. People actually die from riots after big matches and friends may still have their fights long after the 1978 World Cup finals. Where football is concerned, Madrid is cursed by other Spaniards with a passion the rest of our soccer-crazy planet understands well.
One thing is certain. Madrilenos were charged with high octane when those bombs went off, killing over 200 people, and wounding more than 1,500. The passion would remain. It was now no longer football but plain human anger. Right from the epicenter, rivals passions would merge all across Spain, with 11 million of them marching in unison against this senseless slaughter.
Here is a curious question. Was someone trying to tap into this fevered victory mood and channel it into a murderous rampage? The match was announced months back. Someone familiar with mob psychology might answer this.
It’s my opinion that the now familiar idiots miscalculated badly. Here are some of my contentions:
“In a videotaped message”, a self-declared front man for al-Qaida claimed the carnage was “a response to your collaboration with the criminals Bush and his allies”. The videotape was placed in a trashcan near a “Madrid mosque after an Arabic-speaking man called a Madrid TV station” and graciously provided the tip.
This is suicide in many places. Did someone wanted Muslims there to get lynched after the bombings? It is stupid or amateurish for a Muslim terrorist to place a tape like that besides a mosque. Did they think that a vengeful Madrid mob would swell the ranks of Al Qaeda and provide ammunition for Bush to prolong his War on Terror? Let’s see if the suspects were patsies. Time will tell.
Or did an outside party badly miscalculate that the bombings would tilt the balance towards Prime Minister Jose Maria’s Aznar’s party? There is only one country in the world capable of such juvenile tactics and only one developed Western country where it will work, over and over. Remember, 90 per cent of Spaniards were against the War on Terror despite “opinion polls” which showed a slender lead for Mariano Rajoy, Aznar’s man.
Now, for the discrepancies.
The “autopsies conducted on victims showed no signs of suicide bombings — a hallmark of Islamic militants. The massive police hunt for the bombers focused in part on a stolen van found with seven detonators and an audiotape of verses from the Quran.” A witness told Associated Press Television News he saw three suspicious men go from the vehicle to a station where three of the four bombed trains originated. The men wore coverings on their faces but ‘it wasn't cold ... I thought it was very strange,’ said the man, who did not want to be named.” (AP, March 14, 2004).
Yes, very strange indeed for them to leave behind detonators with tell-tale Islamic goodwill souvenirs, and inviting attention with ski masks at the end of a Madrid winter. A cop on the beat would have stopped them right there. Amateurs or amateurish agent provocateurs?
Things were shaping up. When possible, try to kill a few birds with one stone, or people with a couple of bombs whenever possible. You get a multi-pronged game and they don’t come bloodied with feathers. Let see what happened next.
“British Prime Minister Tony Blair demanded a tough response to global terrorism in the wake of the Madrid train bombings, comparing the fight to those waged by previous generations against Nazism and communism. ‘My father's generation were in the last conventional war to be fought on the soil of Europe to defeat the Nazis’.”
That was smart of you Tony, to use the term “conventional” war. You omitted the war waged by the IRA. You never, ever mention where the money for this terrorism comes from? From a then impoverished Ireland? And your father could do nuts about it.
“Our generation grew up with the Cold War that ended with the defeat of totalitarian communism.”
Tony, Tony, my man! Save that for others. During totalitarian communism’s heyday, Winston Churchill threw back anti-communist Soviets back into their enemy’s hands for a sure, cruel slaughter. He didn’t cry for those Cossacks or the Ukrainians who never threatened your nation on a Soviet scale. Stalin was appeased. You were against communism? And what was his link to Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the bacon-loving founder of Pakistan. This seems to have gone down in some black hole of history. Do you know of the 7-digit toll of murder, rape and abominations of kinds that was perpetrated in the last days of the British Raj?
You never learn from this tactical blunder. Your constant reference to Nazism has backfired. People everywhere are now associating it with the Anglo-American alliance. You are getting stupid advice. When you keep tossing in that Nazi ruse, someone throws back a historically attested hypocrisy.
“But let the message go out, from Spain, from Britain, from the free world: in our grief, we will not show fear, we will do what is necessary to defend our way of life, and to defeat this terrorism,” he said.
Great rhetoric. Does this guy think he is Churchill?
Those entrusted to combat “terrorism” are either not doing their jobs, or it wasn’t their job in the first place!
“We will match their determination with our own, we will be as resolute as they are fanatical, as strong in defence of good as they are in doing evil... this is a battle which is far from over but like previous battles vital to the humankind, this one too will be won.”
Where is Bin Laden? I see this blast coincides with a “massive manhunt for him, and now it has shifted to his deputy Ayman Al-Zawahiri. In the land of Pathans? Even Lord Mountbatten turned chicken when he met them peacefully in Peshawar in 1947, while Churchill was subtly playing his genocidal game. Is President Musharaff readying himself for paradise?
“Foreign Secretary Jack Straw… described the incident as “an attack on the very foundations of our democratic way of life.” (AFP, Saturday, March 13, 2004)
I can only pick a quote from the suave George Bush Sr – “Who is this chicken shit? What were your people at Cheltenham doing? Eavesdropping on UN missions, bugging Kofi Annan’s office or more importantly Franco-German businesses? Or are they so good and preoccupied that nothing has yet to happen within UK borders, despite the continuing hysteria? Don’t remind us about your top-notch security. Recall the two grand heists at Heathrow in 2002. Luckily, they were thieves, not terrorists. Do you know something that many of us are only beginning to suspect?
The game gets more murky and irrational. The ETA was quickly blamed but that was honestly convenient for Aznar’s party. He was probably caught by surprise, you see. Five people “were arrested in connection with a cell phone inside an explosives-packed gym bag found on one of the bombed commuter trains.” (AP, March 13)
The ETA left behind a cellphone with some Muslim names in it, inside an explosive-packed bag? Nice touch, whoever did it. They goofed over detonators, Quranic verses and on top of that a cellphone that would lead right to the perpetrators. Now, Islamic militants were getting bold. Calls were made claiming responsibility. It was “part of settling old accounts with Spain, the crusader, and America’s ally in its war against Islam.” (AP, March 13)
Wasn’t Silvio Berlusconi’s Italy a better target? Didn’t he say all those nasty things against the Arab World in the aftermath of Sept 11? Wasn’t it Safar al-Hawali who said “Rome is our enemy till Doomsday!” Why attack a nation whose people sympathized with you? They have memories too, in fact longer than theAmericans, and might want to settle accounts after this mess is sorted out. Is this treachery, or another stupidity in an irrational game?
“Ever since Germany and some other European nations refused to support a U.S.-led military intervention into Iraq last year, a trans-Atlantic rift has been evident… For the past year, Europeans have been waiting for an apology, but they have not gotten one yet.” (NBC News, March 12).
So, the Europeans were still inwardly seething. Hard to fight “terror” without them on board. This attack opens up new possibilities. Aznar has outlived his usefulness. “The most devastating terror attack since Sept. 11, 2001, will change the consciousness of the people, and not only in Spain,” said Financial Times Deutschland on Friday.
In Italy, La Repubblica weighed in, noting that the fear of mass attacks was no longer the preserve of the Americans. “Whoever thought the American 'devils' were the only ones in the sights of Islamic terrorism was wrong. We are all in the same boat,” it said. I’d be genuinely surprised if this daily is not owned or linked to Berlusconi.
Here is another strain of the game. This is not irrational. It is in fact brilliant. This was inserted into the report on the Madrid bombings.
“Military transformation, including the shifting of U.S. units from countries like Germany, Britain, and Italy to new facilities in Eastern Europe, is presently under way.” (Newsweek, March 12).
How convenient. Old Europe is getting too hot. The ultimate prize is not that far off. Has anyone guessed about that one? Lots of people wearing ski masks here, undetected.
Ok. You have explosives and detonators that give off conflicting signals, a very distinct departure from normal modus operandi – no suicide bombers – and on March 1 two ETA suspects were nabbed “in the city of Cuenca, east of Madrid. They were driving a van containing half a tonne of bomb-making material.” (Observer, Sunday, March 14). That’s a helluva lot of crackers! The Guardian/Observer was behaving like my once favorite paper again, until I read this.
“Tony Blair has read the runes of the times better than many of his critics, even if there can be arguments about his tactics and strategy.” We may have to act pre-emptively.” (Observer, March 14, 2004).
Hand out those yellow cakes, the tastiest ones come from Niger. Wolf them down in 45 minutes. Tag-along Tony was right, after all. Doesn’t this sound like Bush’s – actually Rumsfeld et al’s “tactics and strategy”?
There are more delights.
“I appreciate so very much the Spanish government's fight against terror ... The United States stands with them, said President George W. Bush”. He must have been “hispanically” speaking as even Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams declared he was “horrified by the atrocity” and called for those responsible to stop. (Guardian, Saturday, March 13, 2004).
I am speechless!
Home secretary David Blunkett “warned that the tentacles of terror were spreading throughout the globe, and the new dilemma was how to balance security with liberty…. the new form of terror plunged societies into a situation where norms of prosecution and punishment did not apply.” (Guardian, March 13)
Ah! We have a crude attempt here to have Guantanamo and the Patriot Act in the EU. We certainly have the blind attempting to lead the more visually-gifted. The BBC Online reported that “public opinion may therefore be readier to accept more draconian security and restrictions on civil liberties, though that cannot be taken for granted.”
After all, a group calling itself The Brigade of Abu Hafs al-Masri says “it needs what it calls Bush's ‘idiocy and religious fanaticism’ to ‘wake up’ the Islamic world.” (The Omaha Channel, March 18)
Now you see where we are getting at?
Conclusion:
1) An attempt to stoke Jihad and justify the Anglo-American War on Terror. Bush was trying to ride on this wave and win re-election. So, was Blair.
2) Plunge Europe back into the Old Days. The most effective opposition to the war, and the best intellectual arguments against it come from Old Europe. The Arab world is doing nuts. Their leaders can talk the talk, and not walk the walk, yet can belly dance to Yankee Doodle. Europe must be reckoned. Here is your Clash of Civilizations fraud again.
It’s not working so far. The Old Europe is politically savvy and their irrationality is mainly confined to football (soccer). They weren’t capitulating to terrorists when they voted in Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero no matter what US big media says.
This game has gone awry this time.
Copyright@2004 Mathew Maavak
March 21, 2004
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