Bashing Bush is Europe’s favorite pastime today

PARIS, France – It’s all George W. Bush’s fault. That’s the refrain I’ve been hearing ever since I stepped off the plane here in Paris – from the Charles De Gaulle air terminal at Roissy to the corner bistro.

Last night, Ambassador Hector Villarroel took us to dinner, thankfully in a svelte and dignified Japanese restaurant overlooking the river Seine. Passing Bateaux Mouches occasionally steamed by below, lighting up the dark stream with their powerful beams. Only then did that eerily-familiar statue of Liberty, planted athwart the water’s course, come into view.

This pigmy statue (dwarfed in dimensions by the immense Statue of Liberty standing in New York harbor) can only remind onlookers that, once upon a time, Americans and Frenchmen had been friends. The miniature statue is the model on which French sculptors had shaped the massive Lady, holding up the lamp of hope at the N.Y. harbor entrance, saying: "Give me your tired, your poor – your huddled masses yearning to breathe free . . . I lift my lamp beside the Golden door."

The monument had been gifted by the French people to the American people generations ago – in a demonstration of fraternité. Nowadays, few American tourists go to France where the Eiffel Tower still sparkles with brilliance and the high-stepping chorines at Le Crazy Horse still romp about the stage in the altogether. The Americans nowadays shun "French fries" and gobble up "Freedom fries", although going about 1 still spot a few McDonalds, and, Sus, a couple of new Starbucks Cafes, one of them on the Rue de L’Opera almost across the street from one of my favorite bookshops, Brentano’s. ("Paul’s" down the street, a 19th century chain, serves better caffeine, and bakes tastier, bread and snacks, but this is a secret jealously guarded by its Parisian customers.)

Are the French police and authorities "scared" of recent threats issued by a mysterious Muslim terrorist group calling itself the Mosvar Barayev Commando, in which the Islamic crazies vow to violently attack targets in the Capital, beseeching "Allah to sow terror in the hearts of the French" and "plunge France into terror and remorse"? Not the way I’ve seen it the past three days in this rainy metropolis.

When we arrived aboard the two-hour Air France flight from train-shocked Madrid, police guards cursorily scanned our passports and waved us in – one of them even (to my astonishment) cracked a smile. How un-French, I reacted.

It’s true that cars full of gendarmerie ("les flics") straddle the Autoroute, scanning with radar eye incoming vehicles. Any small car, or panel van, full of bulky guys with curly hair (your typical Arab or sub-Saharan fellow) gets pulled over for interrogation and search. But it’s par for the course. This is a land where there’s a Muslim on every street corner, particularly around "La Fouquet’s" on the Champ Elysées.

The Sunday evening strollers are not bothered by the overhanging Islamic "bomb" would-be outrage. The Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy is on the job, tough as nails and irritating to Jacques Chirac even more than to Osama bin Laden. "He must be a Hungarian Jew," his enemies mutter, speaking darkly about the popular Sarkozy’s not-so-well-hidden Presidential aspirations. Chirac feels his Napoleonic throne, like the blue upholstered one left behind by Bonaparte in the Chateau de Fontainebleau when he abdicated in 1808 and bade goodbye to his troops in the courtyard, getting somewhat wobbly. "Anyway," another one of Sarkozy’s foes remarked yesterday, "Some Arab is bound to assassinate him."

Sarkozy must be doing a good job, if that’s what they say.

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President Macapagal-Arroyo was right to declare that our Philippine troops will stay put in Iraq, even if the new PSOE Socialist government in Madrid has announced it will pull all 1,300 Spanish troops out of Iraq.

The funny part of the latter’s intent is that many of the 1,300 Spaniards now serving in Iraq will be reluctant to "come home," although their families will surely, and tearfully welcome the move. For the bulk of the modern forces in those desert sands belong to the famous La Legion, Spain’s renowned Foreign Legion (which stormed across from Africa with Generalissimo Franco to "save" Spain from the Red Republicans and the anarchists). The Legionnaires proudly call themselves Los Novios de la Muerte (The Lovers of Death). Franco died in 1975, and his statues (save for one) have been pulled down.

His "dictatorship" is derided. But el Candillo and his Legions from Africa kept Spain, at the very least, into turning into another Cuba. Put dynamic Spain – which last year produced three million cars, attracts 52 million tourists annually, and is growing faster than any order state in the European Union – beside charming but tatty Havana, and you get the picture.

But wait. The March 11 train bombings have plunged Spain back, with a big blacklash in the voting, into Socialism (palanté, palanté!) The new incoming Presidente del Gobierno, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has declared that all Spanish soldiers will be yanked home from the Iraqi sands by the end of June. He is stuck, to be fair, with this cowardly, but wildly popular (at home) Socialist Party promise.

Zapatero, charming and handsome in contrast to his staid professorial—type Partido Popular opponent, the defeated Mariano Rajoy, is jumping with the joy of triumph. He packaged himself, it must be observed, very well in the campaign. Instead of using his father’s surname, "Rodriguez", he adopted his mother’s surname, "Zapatero". There are, after all, too many Rodriguezes in Spain, even plundering husbands whose wives are away then go out and play are dubbed "de Rodriguez".

And so, the candidate chose "Zapatero". There are few "Shoemakers", indeed to cobble together a winning combination. Terrorist bombs plus clumsy government cover-up (the government tried to blame the ETA Basque terrorists, not Moroccan Islamic murderers, for the ten bombs which devastated four trains and killed 201 hapless commuters, wounding another 1,500. The lie unravelled at the very last minute. Enter Zapatero and his militant Socialists.

Can Zapatero soft-shoe through the next few weeks? He’s still gloating. The left-leaning French newspaper, Le Canard Enchaine, bannerheadlined; "Jose Luis Zapatero la joue modeste: ‘Notre victoire c’est du pur Aznar." (Zapatero modestly asserts: ‘Our victory was thanks to Aznar’). He was referring to outgoing President/Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar. The Canard’s editors slickly added the subheadline: "L’Horreur et L’Erreur." (The Horror and the Error).

In truth, all of the French dailies and the weekly newsmagazines are filled with images of that gruesome, cruel "Massacre in Madrid."

La Nouvel Observateur (24 March issue) has a sobbing woman on its cover, datelined, "Madrid, 11 Mars 2004." The title: "L’Europe Face a al-Qaida."

Paris Match blares forth: "40 pages speciales: La Guerre en Europe." On the cover is a terrible scene of the still alive and the dead, being picked up by rescue workers.

L’ Express (21 March edition) has a dead woman sprawled by the rails under the headline, "Espagne: L’Horreur Terroriste."

Le Point, their equivalent of NEWSWEEK, has Osama all over its front cover: "Terreur en Europe. al-Qaeda. Les Textes qui font peur; Sa nouvelle strategie; les reseaux Marocains."

With so many Moroccan terrorist suspects being rounded up, out of Spain’s 300,000 Moroccan workers and residents, al-Qaeda is getting glaring front-page reviews.

Europeans are beginning to quake. Interior Ministers are meeting worriedly in Brussels.

And it’s all George "Dubya" Bush’s fault!

Why did he rush into Iraq and let the vicious Genie (Djinn) out of the bottle? Where are those so-called Weapons of Mass Destruction? Alas, the way I see it here on the ground in France, in Spain, and next-door Western Europe, those WMDs, unfound in Iraq (did Saddam haddam?), don’t matter. What I see are the Weapons of Self-Destruction being unleashed. Europe versus America and Britain. The Alliance collapsing. Bush being blamed for everything.

Poor Bush. He patriotically charged into the fray and found only flics in the desert. Now, even Zapatero, flexing his newly-found rictus muscles, is thrashing Bush and meddling in the coming November elections. He’s suggesting that the Americans elect the Democratic opposition candidate, Massachussets Senator John Kerry. How cheeky can you get?

The Islamic militants, in case you‘ve not noticed, are on the offensive everywhere. In Kosovo, in Baghdad, in Malaysia’s elections, where Imams intone: "If you vote for PAS, you’ll go to heaven."

(Most Malaysians missed their chance for heaven. They voted Badawi and his ruling party back into power instead.)

What about the Philippines? I’m heading home, where it’s . . . I hope . . . safer.

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THE ROVING EYE . . . Before young Rex Ferrer’s body was flown home last Thursday (aboard a Thai International Airways flight), I met his parents, Arturo and Anita Ferrer, at the office of our Ambassador to Madrid, Joseph D. "Lani" Bernardo. Both of them, while grieving for the loss of their son in the terrible March 11 terrorist attacks which killed 201 hapless commuters – men, women, children and babies – were composed and dignified. They had opted to fly their son’s remains to Manila and, after ceremonies in the Iglesia ni Cristo (they are devout INC members), bring him "home" to Tuguegarao by land for his funeral in Isabela. We spoke in Ilocano. Arturo recalled that Rex, 21, had even rung them at home in Torrejon by his cellphone (movil) from the train – at 7:24 a.m. that very morning. He had been on his way to the INC capilla off the Plaza de España, not far from the Estacion Atocha for which his train was headed. That was the last time they were to hear his voice. Five minutes later, at 7:29 a.m., his coach exploded. The Muslim terrorists had placed backpacks or knapsacks, packed with "Goma-Dos", a powerful explosive, in various coaches on four trains. All of the trains were speeding towards the centrally-located Atocha station (a terminal as huge as the Termini in Rome, or the immense Hauptbahnhof in Frankfurt). I think the plan had been to detonate the explosives (by cellphone "trigger" mechanism) simultaneously as they pulled into their platforms in the Atocha. If the murderer-bombers had achieved this, they could have blown up many hundreds more people milling about on the platform – but their timing, while merciless and effective, was off. The coaches exploded near the Atocha tunnel, in El Pozo, and at the Santa Eugenia depot. Nonetheless, outside of those shattered, blown apart, or mutilated at the first explosions – ten of them – another 1,500 were seriously wounded. In the case of Rex, his father told me, one of the planted bombs had exploded just behind him, damaging half his face and his body (I won’t describe it). Tears in his eyes, his dad – still himself a relatively youthful 42 years in age – related how Rex had brought a brand-new, digitalized movil (cellphone) only two days earlier. It had some spectacular features, his papa recalled. "Look, papa," Rex had quipped, showing him how he had taken a picture of himself with the phone, then could fragment his face into pieces. Then, to his dad’s surprise, Rex clicked the movil and put his face together again. They all had laughed merrily at the surprise, and the clever features of this new, computerized movil. Alas, in real life, the mourning hundreds of families – indeed, all of the millions who are still bomb-shocked in dolorous Spain – can never put their loved ones together again. Nor mend their broken hearts so readily. March 11 was Europe’s 9/11. A defining moment with which Spain and Western Europe are still trying to come to grips. The sad thing for America’s George Bush is that many are pinning the blame on him for having "provoked" the Islamic terrorists by invading Iraq. However, the question must inevitably be faced: If we don’t confront those terrorists and fight them, will they stop their rampage of killing? The terrible truth is that too many fundamentalist Muslims are being taught that the battle is that of Islam versus the Unbelievers and Infidels – this means us. You better believe it. The next bomb could be in your neighborhood, whether we provoke them or not.