An Irishman's Diary

The catastrophe of Spain is beginning to sink in; and catastrophe it is, in every sense

The catastrophe of Spain is beginning to sink in; and catastrophe it is, in every sense. Catastrophe, firstly, for the families of the 200 innocents butchered as they went to work; catastrophe for the injured, many of whom will never know peace or painlessness again: Omagh plus Enniskillen five-fold - the blind, the paralysed and the brain-dead, lingering in some untouchable limbo of despair.

How can we stop this war? We can't. What can we give to the terrorists that will bring them to their senses? Nothing. What about talks? They will not talk. They are not interested in talking. They want us dead. That's it. What can we do to stop further atrocities? Well for a start, be vigilant. Very, very vigilant.

But how can we be vigilant when the Government has not even begun to create a culture or instruments of vigilance? We have no railway police, no monitoring of the DART. People can still leave their bags anywhere on a train without anyone complaining. Our airports are almost open-access, as we discovered at Shannon last year, when protesters were easily able to damage US military aircraft, initially without a sign of interruption from gardaí.

We largely are unaware of the threat we face - and we are not alone in Europe. In fact, we are probably, with the exception of the Poles and the British, much of a muchness with other EU countries. However, on his first day in office, the new Spanish prime minister - Bambi, as he's affectionately called - set new standards in grovelling appeasement which must have got our jihadistas weeping in delighted disbelief.

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This is how the sequence ran. Ten bombs, 200 dead infidels. Two days later, an election. The outgoing anti-Islamicist government, widely expected to sweep back into power, is instead expelled. Next day, the new government yields all the ground that al-Qaeda - or perhaps it should now be El Caída - could possibly have wanted for the moment, pending, that is, the surrender of Andalucia of Islam.

(The return of the Spanish province is one interim demand of the Islamicists, presumably because they've heard of manifestos and things, and thought they'd have a go at drawing one up.)

Yes, a withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq was one of Bambi's election promises, but he didn't have to declaim the policy with such aggression and vehemence the day after election victory. He spoke bitterly of the consequence of bombs; but the bombs were not those which had butchered a couple of hundred innocents in Madrid, but the bombs of a year ago. Suddenly, Tony Blair and George Bush were the villains of the piece - or should I say villains of the peace?

Peace is a fiction, for there is no peace, just war. Inescapable, certain war. And one looks at the photographs of the Spanish women with the word PAZ taped over their mouths, or holding up the photograph of Bush, Blair and Jose Maria Aznar, with the caption, "Could this picture have cost 200 deaths?", and with a sinking heart one realises: no, they haven't got a clue. But then much of Europe hasn't either. Within the space of a weekend, Spain exited the Atlanticist alliance, and entered and passionately embraced the Frankish Paris-Berlin axis.

Since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has such a small number of bombs ever so changed the course of history? What incentive is there now for any terrorist groups to believe in the steel of European democracy? If an aggressive, insulting rejection of a long-standing Spanish friendship with the US is the immediate result of a few bombs, then why not try that experiment more often? You might well scare entire governments and polities into stampeding towards division and hysteria, as the victims blame the US for the bombs that the US's enemies had detonated in their cities.

It's an elegant arrangement, in which the circle of responsibility returns unfailingly to the US, no matter who does what to whom. Cursing the Americans is now the main game in town; and if we do - or so goes the theory, if that's not too grand a word to describe a blue funk - then maybe the bad men will go away.

They won't. They're with us for years and years and years. We will come to bless the decade before 9/11 as the most wonderful of the 20th century. Communism was dead and freedom had taken wing across the Eurasian landmass. But no period of unbroken peace is possible in this world, especially now as the fragments of the old Ottoman empire clatter against one another, seething with feral hatreds, and releasing malignant poisons into the bloodstream of the world in regular, lethal pulses.

The combined intelligence services of the US and Europe failed to detect anything in advance of the Madrid operation, which turned into a stunning victory for Islamo-fascism. Heartened by their success there, and by their apparent ability to cherry-pick their way through democratic governments, al-Qaeda will be back, and all we can do is wait on fire-watch, binoculars in hand, stirrup-pumps at our feet, blood-banks at the ready.

Our "neutrality" is history. Its vestiges are as great a protection against Osama's jihadistas as Mrs O'Malley's mop against inundation from the mad Atlantic. And what happens if terrorists take over Shannon airport? How would the Rangers get there if they did? Hitch-hike? We chose not to equip our Defence Forces with helicopters. Now who will rescue us from terrorist assault? The Americans, whose president we insult at every opportunity? Or the British? Oh, bitter irony.