Bush’s Iraq Coalition Splinters

Spain: Heinous Bombing and Official Lies Topple Government

Reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 823, 2 April 2004.

Following the criminal bombing of passenger trains in Madrid on March 11, which killed some 200 people, the population’s grief and horror turned to fury over the lies manufactured by the Popular Party (PP) and Prime Minister José María Aznar. The PP is the political heir to the bloody military dictatorship of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, who came to power in the late 1930s after crushing the insurgent proletariat during the Spanish Civil War. Aznar personally phoned the major newspapers to plant the lie that the bombing was the work of the Basque separatist group ETA, despite the organization’s disavowal and condemnation of this heinous crime. The mounting evidence that the bombing was the work of Islamic fundamentalists in payback for Spain’s stalwart support to U.S. imperialism’s Iraq war, which was opposed by 90 percent of Spaniards, was the political bombshell that dumped Aznar out of office in a surprise upset in the general election three days later.

Aznar had staked his career on repressing the Basques and no doubt thought the Madrid bombing could be manipulated for his political convenience. But on the eve of the election, thousands took to the streets and laid siege to PP headquarters around the country, chanting, “The dead are ours! The war is yours!” Families of the victims issued a statement denouncing the Aznar government and demanded, “No more blood! No more manipulation! No more lies!”

The Madrid bombings were monstrous crimes against workers and immigrants. Intended to cause the maximum amount of carnage, the bombs were placed on trains coming from working-class districts on the outskirts of Madrid, such as the historically militant area of El Pozo del Tío Raimundo. A quarter of those killed were immigrants of 13 different nationalities. With this bloody deed, as with the criminal attack on of the World Trade Center, the Islamic fundamentalists who claimed responsibility for the attack demonstrate the same murderous nationalist mindset of the American and European rulers by punishing the working class for the policies of their rulers. The race-hatred and blood scores inculcated by religious fundamentalism of all types are indicated by a note received by an Arabic-language newspaper in London which spoke of “settling old accounts with Spain,” a reference to the 15th-century Spanish Reconquista which reversed the Arab conquest of Spain nearly 800 years earlier!

The unexpected victory of the social democrats of the Partido Socialista Obrero de España (PSOE) sent shock waves through Europe and the Bush White House and cracked George Bush’s “Coalition of the Willing.” Incoming Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero immediately announced that he would stick by his campaign promise to pull the 1,300 Spanish troops from Iraq if the United Nations did not take command of the occupation. The breach in the coalition then widened, with the Polish president complaining that it had been “misled” into Iraq on the false pretext of “weapons of mass destruction,” and South Korea refused to carry out the scheduled deployment of its contingent of troops to Kirkuk.

In addition to the diplomatic blow of the Spanish elections, the Bush administration is taking hits on the home front as Richard Clarke, former national security adviser to both Clinton and Bush, testified to the lies of both administrations before a Congressional committee investigating the September 11 attacks. Clarke’s just-published memoir, Against All Enemies, became an instant best seller despite desperate attempts by the White House to discredit him. While the Bush gang’s lies justly anger the American electorate, no one should have any illusions that the Democrats offer an alternative. When Zapatero announced his support to John Kerry as an “antiwar” candidate, Kerry responded by asking that Zapatero take back his pledge to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq.

The UN’s Kofi Annan and Spanish leaders are scrambling to find a way to keep the Spanish in Iraq and allow Zapatero to save face. Zapatero has offered to send more troops to Afghanistan, where Spain already has a presence. Spanish troops are part of “peacekeeping” occupations under UN mandate in Kosovo and Bosnia. Spain also maintains colonial enclaves in Morocco.

“Anti-Terror” Laws Target Labor, Immigrants and Minorities

While striking a pose against the Iraq war, Zapatero speaks for the imperialist interests of America’s European rivals, led by France and Germany. They view a UN-administered occupation as a way to enhance their own interests in the region and to get a better share of the spoils than that allotted by the Bush administration, with its ties to American oil companies and firms like the infamous Halliburton, which have been awarded the contracts to pillage Iraq.

The European rulers have embraced the “war on terror” because it serves their interests against workers and the oppressed, especially immigrants at home. Zapatero vowed that “Spain could be counted on for an ‘intransigent fight against terrorism’”(Financial Times, 19 March). The PSOE’s “anti-terror” fight the last time it held office meant launching the fascistic death squads known as GAL (Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación) in the 1980s against Basque nationalists.

Other European states lost no time in opportunistically seizing on the Madrid bombing for a domestic crackdown. France escalated its Vigipirate cop terror plan to “code red” for train stations and airports. The train station in Rouen, a heavily industrial working-class center, was occupied by cops in full riot gear. Over 12,500 people were snagged in police identity-checks in the first few days after the Madrid bombing, a dragnet to harass, detain and deport individuals from France’s huge North African immigrant population.

On March 25, European Union leaders created a Europe-wide post of “counterterrorism coordinator.” Tony Blair’s Britain wants EU member states “to be more rigorous in tackling money flows to banned organisations. It wants to widen the net to charities, individuals and groups” (Financial Times, 19 March). Ultimately, the domestic target for Europe’s capitalist rulers is the labor movement, which began to flex its muscle in opposition to the Iraq war with disruptions of munitions deliveries by train drivers in Scotland and Italy and which is resisting austerity attacks on hard-won gains of the labor movement all across Europe.

Down With Repression of Basque Nationalists!

Although immigrants are in the cross hairs of the anti-terror hysteria, there has also been an outpouring of support for them in the wake of the bombing. A 12 March communiqué by the popular-frontist Izquierda Unida (IU—United Left coalition, which includes the old Stalinist Communist Party and has the support of many pseudo-Trotskyist groups) commendably called “to facilitate the immediate legalization of those workers from other countries affected by the crime and who fear expulsion because of their administrative situation. We cannot allow these people to be afraid to cry for their loved ones.” Even the right-wing Aznar government felt compelled to grant citizenship to the victims and their families.

Yet the national question is the Achilles’ heel of the chauvinist Spanish left. The IU peddled the same lie as the PP government, issuing a communiqué on the very day of the bombing, titled “Democratic Unity Against Terrorism,” in which it snarled, “With this fascist-style massacre, perpetrated with repugnant cowardice against hundreds of workers and students, with this act of Nazi barbarism, ETA is trying to end Spanish democracy and to bring to its knees the rule of law.... Izquierda Unida supports all actions by the state security forces leading to arresting and bringing to justice the murderers.” IU helps to bind the workers to their exploiters as “Spaniards” against the oppressed Basque and Catalan peoples fighting Castilian Spanish domination.

The International Communist League has steadfastly fought against repression of Batasuna, which is viewed as the political arm of ETA, and ETA itself by the Spanish and the French states. The Basque region represents a classic case of an oppressed nation forcibly denied the right of self-determination, that is, the right to form an independent state. While the heart of the Basque country is in northern Spain, the Basque nation extends into southern France. As our comrades in the Ligue Trotskyste de France declared in protest of the Spanish government’s suspension of Batasuna in 2002, which paved the way for the complete ban of the party last year (WV No. 787, 20 September 2002):

“It is the urgent task of the proletariat, particularly in Spain and France, to mobilize against this sinister ban, which not only targets radical Basque nationalists but also sets the stage for repression of any political dissent by workers or youth. Down with the ban on Batasuna! Freedom now for the hundreds of Basque nationalists, some of whom have been in prison for many years in Spain and France!”

While defending Batasuna and ETA against state repression, we Marxists oppose their nationalist outlook as well as the petty-bourgeois strategy of individual terrorism, which is a desperate, losing substitute for and obstacle to the mobilization of proletarian, internationalist class struggle. The elimination of individual representatives of the capitalist state and ruling class does not address the fundamental need to replace the entire rotting capitalist system itself, which requires the collective struggle of a politically conscious working class. Moreover, the reactionary logic of nationalism leads to appalling acts of indiscriminate terror, such as ETA’s 1987 bombing of a supermarket in a working-class suburb of Barcelona, which killed 21 people.

As we wrote in protest of the ban on Batasuna last year (WV No. 805, 6 June 2003):

“The rich history of united working-class struggle in Spain—from the Spanish Revolution of the 1930s to the pre-revolutionary upsurge that followed the death of Franco in 1975—has demonstrated that the resolution of the national question in Spain is inextricably linked with the struggle for workers power throughout the Iberian peninsula. Only a Leninist vanguard party defending this democratic right will be able to unite the Basques with workers throughout Spain —as well as with workers in Portugal and across the Pyrenees in France—in a common struggle for workers power.”

For the right of self-determination for the Basque people! Down with “war on terror” repression of labor, the left, immigrants and minorities!