Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

The respected and eloquent British historian, writer and commentator, Timothy Garton Ash, says "This has been a terrible week for what remains of the west." Writing in today's Guardian, in a piece entitled "Welcome to the Titanic", he laments the state of the trans-Atlantic relationship and goes on to point out that "it would be criminal, self-lacerating folly for anyone to wish that the democratic reconstruction of Iraq should fail". Indeed. But who wishes it to fail? I don't, and I presume you don't either. Apart from the gangsters and the terrorists and some deranged western "thinkers" and their supporters in the media, who could wish for such a monstrous outcome?

Be that as it may, we now find ourselves on the Titanic says Garton Ash. The band is playing for all its worth, dangers are at port and starboard, and the captain? "?the look-outs and the crew are all staring at the bridge, where the Spanish first lieutenant is having a stand-up row with his British mate, the Italian cook is badmouthing the American engineer, and the French midshipman is admiring himself in the mirror, while much larger icebergs loom ahead." The problem here is that there's no captain on Garton Ash's ship. That's surely an invitation to disaster. Is it any wonder that the west is falling apart when intellects of the calibre of Timothy Garton Ash cannot crew a ship? But maybe the problem here is that Garton Ash is in denial about who leads the west today. Perhaps he's unable to utter the captain's name?

By the way, he also writes that calling the outcome of Sunday's general election in Spain "appeasement" is a "stupid slur" and goes on to add: " So far as the Spanish voters' intentions are concerned, the election result was not subjectively a victory for al-Qaida. But it is, as Marxists used to say, an objective victory for al-Qaida." Fine thinking, no doubt, but many of us don't have much time for this kind of argument anymore. The facts are that more than 200 commuters were slaughtered and more than 1,000 were maimed a week ago. Three days later, a government committed to fighting terrorism was ousted and is now going to be replaced by one whose leader has said he will withdraw his country's troops from the job of "the democratic reconstruction of Iraq". What are we meant to call this then?

To be fair to Garton Ash, he doesn't exclude José Œuis Rodrí§µez Zapatero from criticism. In a nice touch, he says that the man "is long on names but short on experience," and continues:

"It would, of course, have been quite wrong for him to renege on his election promises: including one to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq unless a full UN mandate radically changes the character of the occupation. However, the vehement tone in which he repeated his criticism of Anglo-American policy in Iraq, talking of a war based on 'lies' and calling for 'self-criticism' by Blair and Bush, was suited to a pre-bombing election rally but not to a statesman assuming the leadership of a nation now in the frontline of an international defence of freedom against Islamist terror. 'You can't just go and bomb people,' said Mr Zapatero. The bombs he was referring to were not the al-Qaida bombs that had just massacred his own people but American bombs dropped on Iraq a year ago. It was almost as if Bush and Blair had planted the bomb at the Atocha station."

Yes, indeed. That's the pity of the situation we are in. A final point: a minnow such as Rainy Day cannot attempt to debate history with the likes of Timothy Garton Ash, but we do feel that his analogy about us being on the Titanic is not apt. The ship the west is on, we feel, is the RMS Lusitania. This is war and civilians are being massacred. It's time we stopped deluding ourselves.