It is very probable that the recent attack against two officers of the Guardia Civil (Spanish Civil Guard) in the south-western French town of Capbreton will not be the last one carried out by ETA in this legislature. It seems inevitable that attacks will continue, taking into account material that was seized at the crime scene. However, the government continues to make half-hearted attempts with the terrorist group; the last one occurred with Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba speaking of a “fortuitous” attack; that is to say, accidental, making it seem as if the terrorist group were not demonstrating day after day that its will to kill is more alive than ever, and as if the gunshots were fired just by chance. It seems clear that ETA will cause all the damage it can, from now to Election Day and beyond.

 

The Spanish Socialist (PSOE) party’s refusal to revoke the invitation of Parliament to negotiate with the terrorists, and the delay of the government to start the proceedings to ban the Basque National Action (ANV) party from political life are proof of this Administration’s serious inability to understand the new reality. Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero internalized to such extreme his conviction that ETA would not kill anymore that today he is incapable of accepting the deaths that have occurred, admitting his failure, and acting in a way to remedy beyond words, the deficiencies of his antiterrorist policy. He still confuses desires with reality; he freezes when getting bad news and is a roadblock for the war on terror.

 

The worst thing for the government is that the words, gestures and decisions made during its negotiations with ETA have now backfired and become poisonous darts against Zapatero. How can the victims of those terrorist attacks accept that their assassins are considered “men of peace”? How can they possibly understand the attacks being described as “fortuitous” accidents, as if the last officers assassinated in the south of France were on vacations and met the terrorists by chance?

 

For a very long time the government has been dedicated to a terrorist whitewash and attempted to downplay the importance of their crimes and terrorist attacks. And now what? A society such as ours can bear the democratic stoicism and the pain inflicted by terrorists, but what it cannot stand is humiliation inflicted by its own rulers.

 

ETA seems ready to make PSOE pay dearly for their failure to carry out their previous commitments which had been in exchange for the terrorists’ latest truce. Moreover, ETA wants to collect that debt with innocent blood. Zapatero should definitively lose all hope of ETA having any intention of stopping its criminal activity. Even for its own convenience, the government must act consequently: Withdraw Congress’s permission to negotiate, and to ban ANV. Will the government do it? It does not seem probable; it is frozen. Whenever ETA kills, the government goes into a worrisome shock. Luckily, this paralysis does not affect the entire war on terror. Our only hope is in the hands of brave officers such as Raúl Centeno and Fernando Trapero, who risk, and even give their lives, fighting against this terrorist cruelty, and make up for the government’s paralysis.