Remember our invasion of Iraq without the moral or military support of our allies?
Remember the Bush administration’s snubbing and insulting our allies—one of them, Spain—because they would not kowtow to its dictates?
Remember Bush’s uncompromising, macho “you’re with us or against us.”?
Remember Rumsfeld’s “Old Europe” insult?
Remember, as a result of this and other Bush administration affronts, Europe—including Spain—distancing itself from the U.S.?
Remember Spain’s Socialist José Luis Zapatero, as part of his campaign to become Spain’s prime minister, promising to withdraw Spain’s troops from Iraq, if elected?
Remember Spain, under Zapatero, actually withdrawing its 1,300 troops from Iraq?
More recently, remember presidential candidate John McCain vowing not to sit down for talks with foreign leaders who have certain domestic and foreign policies, and demonizing his opponent, Barack Obama, for his willingness to use diplomacy first to resolve international disputes?
Also, more recently, remember John McCain refusing to say whether he would sit down for talks with the Spanish prime minister?
Well, someone who was willing to sit down with the Spanish prime minister was columnist Roger Cohen.
Cohen sat down with Zapatero for an hour and discussed issues that Bush and Condoleezza Rice should have been discussing with him all along. Issues that McCain—according to his own words—might never discuss with him, if elected. Issues that Barack Obama, if elected, certainly would discuss with Zapatero—and with many other world leaders—whether or not they kowtow to us.
In his New York Times column “Hasta la Vista, Baby,” Cohen says,
The United States is weakened when it’s feuding with its allies. The so-called coalition in Iraq has emptied that word of meaning.
Barack Obama gets this. A weakened United States, militarily stretched and economically snared, cannot be cavalier about its alliances. McCain, to judge by his refusal to say he would meet Zapatero, is still in muscle-flexing mode. That’s the last thing we need.
But, should the reader think that Cohen is enamored with Spain’s Socialist prime minister, this is far from the case. Cohen has plenty of criticism for Zapatero’s philosophy and policies.
For example:
Despite Spain’s dictatorial past under Franco, Zapatero seemed to me mealy-mouthed about totalitarianism and tyranny. Moral relativism oozed from his lawyerly repartee. He illustrates why Orwell felt compelled to say: it’s not enough to be antifascist; you must also be in principle anti-totalitarian. The European left has often had a hard time with this notion.
But “the moral to the story” is Cohen’s cry for renewed American leadership in the world; for the renewal of American foreign policy and diplomacy; and his eloquent,
… America was born as an idea and cannot be itself unless it carries that idea forward. That’s the tragedy of the Bush years: the undermining of American ideals. The United States is inseparable from the hope given Emma Lazarus’s “huddled masses yearning to be free;” it is bound to the struggle to ensure that, as Lincoln put it, “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
I totally agree with Cohen’s simple but sensible conclusion: “Obama, if he wins, should get Zapatero to the White House pronto. These are ideas worth discussing between friends.”
¡Sí, España y los españoles son nuestros amigos!
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.