Seven Oaks Magazine.

In a country wherein conservative electors vote to power professional wrestlers and action stars to gubernatorial posts, and wretched old-time actors to the White House, the comforting illusion of war-time grit and heroic storytelling can assume more rhetorical weight than actual historical events. In the war against fascism, America's civilian population saw no real attacks, nor occupation - the only assault on "American soil" was the Japanese bombardment of Pearl Harbor, a military base on the far-flung colony of Hawaii. In contrast, the people of Spain fought a bloody "civil" war throughout the years of the great depression, a struggle between republicanism and tyranny that evolved rapidly into a proxy conflict setting the general European parameters of the Second World War.

But Spain didn't have a multi-million dollar film industry, nor global cultural hegemony, nor the twisted grimaces and grunts of The Duke (not to be confused with Il Duce ) necessary in order to build an anti-Nazi mythology. For more than half a century, we've been regaled with tales of American heroics, and we are assured at every policy turn that the American people, more so than any other in the world, knows well and true the real costs of war, and the prices paid in the unending struggle against Evil. Them Guernica-painting pansies ain't seen shit.

And I'm sure that that, or some such sentiment, is also the explanation which American hawks are using to rationalize how it was that the people of Spain - who less than a week earlier were stalwart allies in the War on Terror, and whose spilt blood meant nearly as much as that spilt on September 11 - could cave in to the man in the cave, electing, on March 14, a Socialist government promising removal of Spanish troops from U.S. command in Iraq.

In the wake of the atrocious Madrid bombings, we were supposed to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Spain. Having themselves shaken off the old rubric of Islam centuries ago, they were now paying the price for their freedom, democracy, and the courage that they showed in helping the world's last superpower to conquer a Third World people already decimated by sanctions. Just as they had attacked New York in 2001, in history's first recorded incident of terrorism and civilian casualties, liberty-loathing Arabs (or, failing that, equally retrograde Basques) had unleashed their barbarism on Madrid. Stay strong, we advised nos hermanos y hermanas - the cost of freedom is often steep.

But then the people of Spain broke the ranks of imperial solidarity, strained as they were across the Atlantic. In a move with few, if any, precedents in North America's electoral history, the Spanish directed their feelings of rage and fear into progressive political action, defeating the rightist government of Jose Maria Aznar. Some were disgusted by the government's sick scapegoating of the Basque in the hours after the bombing while others, already suspicious of the Bush doctrine of war for the prevention of terror, had their inclinations buttressed by the savagery of the attack on Madrid. Whatever the reasons behind their votes - which we often forget were cast by individual people of varying classes and religions, not by some Latin phalanx of co-operative voters - the Spanish instantly sealed their fates, as they were transformed by the forces of history (read: cynicism) into cowards and appeasers, leaving America alone once again, isolated in courage and steadfastness.

But none of this should come as a surprise - the fact is, George W. Bush feels no inherent sympathy with victims of terror per se ; after all, his father taught Mr. bin Laden everything he knows today. In order for that snake to cry his crocodile tears, the agony and hysteria left in the wake of terror must be directed in politically expedient and non-constructive ways. As the callus Mr. Bush showed quite clearly during the controversy caused by the unveiling of his tasteless exercise in political necrophilia (the infamous 9/11 campaign ads) those crumbling towers and plunging bodies are useful merely as backdrops for draconian right-wing domestic policies and Empire-building abroad.

America's hawks turned on Spain in much the same way as Bush himself turned on groups such as America's fire-fighters or peace organizations such as September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows - his solidarity and heartfelt teleprompter messages extended only so long as grief was being directed into support for his policies. When those victimized directly or indirectly by the attacks on September 11 th - in whose name this unelected man dedicated his newly-legitimated presidency - offered their criticism of Bush's budget cuts, or his exploitation of traumatic imagery from that day, the rich boy shrugged in indifference. Instantly, and suggesting what lay in store for the Spanish, their grief became as if Palestinian, Congolese or Haitian: Rough shit, guys, but wholly irrelevant to what we're trying to accomplish.

In the insane, through-the-looking-glass world of the War on Terror, the Patriot Act, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and other travesties of logic and decency, the obvious courage and sensitivity demonstrated by individuals and groups such as September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows or the Spanish electorate are rendered as cowardice. In cynical times such as these, offered a stark choice between war and terror, they are choosing peace and justice. Whether Spanish, American, Canadian or Palestinian, we have no one but each other with whom to link arms and move forward; the Bushes of this world will only cry with you for so long.