He is right to be, for the Madrid events have only deepened popular doubts about Mr. Blair's Iraq venture. The Murdoch-owned Sun predictably praised Mr. Blair for his unquestioning support of the Bush administration's actions, but Steven Glover in The Daily Mail, traditionally the conservative voice of middle England, wrote that "Mr. Blair has succeeded in making things worse than they would otherwise have been.... This is the story of how a sophisticated modern democracy has been misled by one misguided messianic figure... I do not think that the British people will spare, or forgive, Mr. Blair."
Is there a risk that Al-Qaeda would try to deepen this growing alienation from the current governments in London and Rome by "doing a Madrid" on the eve of the next Italian or British elections? Of course there is, for part of its strategy is to isolate the United States from its traditional European allies. Does that mean that those European countries whose governments backed Mr. Bush last year must stick with that policy forever or else end up "appeasing the terrorists?" Obviously not, although that is the rhetoric that Bush supporters apply to the question. The alliance really is weakening, and the culprits really do live in the White House, not in Europe.
It is generally forgotten in Washington, but all the allies and friends who refused to support the invasion of Iraq willingly backed the counter-strike against terrorist bases in Afghanistan in the first days after Sept. 11. Germany, France, Canada and even Russia offered troops (although in the end everybody decided that it would be untactful to let the Russians invade Afghanistan twice in 20 years). There was no problem getting U.N. Security Council authorization for that one either. It's only when the subject changed from terrorism to Iraq that the divisions started growing.
Now the trans-Atlantic alliance is at its weakest in 50 years: "Old Europe" is growing, and in two years "New Europe," the Bush administration's uncritical ally, may include only a handful of East European countries. The Los Angeles Times is a long way from Europe, but it got it exactly right: "The U.S.A. should read the results [of the Spanish elections] as demonstrating anew that most of the world does not see the Iraq campaign as part of the global war on terror... The sympathy that much of the world felt for the U.S.A. after the Sept. 11 attacks has been squandered by invading Iraq with too little global support."
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based
independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
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