Madrid

This from the lead editorial in the March 29 edition of The New Republic : “The new [Spanish] government of the Socialists, led by Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, represents the more commonplace EU view of the world: the suspicion of force, the religion of diplomacy, the horror of American power, the reverence of the United Nations . . . . the Spanish vote certainly said this: We will mourn, but we will not right. Anybody who believes that the bombs in Madrid did not soften the spine and addle the moral sense of Spain is burying his head in the sand.” The contrast with the American response to 9/11 could not be sharper, and the two events help to confirm Robert Kagan’s analysis of the European approach to international relations.