TERRORISTS HAVE SUCCEEDED IN TOPPLING THE SPANISH GOVERNMENT. Jeff Jarvis observes: " In any case, it's a damned shame that terrorists can have an impact on the election and can help bring in the side they apparently wanted."
Eric Olsen has more thoughts on what is, I'm afraid, a bad day for the forces of civilization.
UPDATE: Roger Simon:
I walk out on my deck, looking across the Hollywood Hills at Runyon Canyon, but my mind is in Madrid, at its splendid Puerta del Sol where I have spent so many wonderful days and where sadly fascists have walked before and for too long. But this time they are not under the flag of Generalissimo Franco. This time, ironically, they rally behind the words of a man, Osama bin Laden, whom El Caudillo would have reviled. But of course the cry of both men is the same: Viva la muerte!
Indeed. Meanwhile Mark Aveyard notes a contradiction: "Remember being told by the left that Saddam's regime and Al Queda had no relationship, that they actually hated each other? Now they're saying that Al Queda attacked Spain because the US ousted Saddam!"
And Eric Kolchinsky emails: "Al Queda (or any other terror organization) will rightly perceive that they can influence elections through violence. This vote has greatly increased the probability of a pre-election attack -- here and in Europe." Yes. And it's reduced the likelihood of addressing this problem without major bloodshed. The Spanish electorate has made what seems to me to be a very shortsighted and cowardly decision, and the world may suffer as a result. As Will Allen emails:
To recall Churchill, the election in Spain indicates that many still hold to the belief that feeding the crocodile sufficiently will result in their being last on the menu. They would be proven wrong, of course, if it came to that. In this instance, it won't come to that, given that that this crocodile will be utterly annihilated if it bites hard enough. Unfortunately, such an act of utter annihilation will also entail the annihilation of many innocents. I fear that today's events have brought that grim scenario ever closer, and that what has taken place in Spain could be a harbinger of dangerous developments. I've never wanted to be wrong more than I do now.
I hope that Will is wrong, too. I fear that he's not. It's worth reading what Lee Harris wrote on Friday:
Perhaps this was a sheer coincidence, and the terrorists had no intention of causing people to change their minds about which candidates to vote for. But if it wasn't a coincidence, then this would compel us to recognize a potentially horrendous new development, namely, the use of catastrophic terror to "persuade" the Spanish people vote against the pro-America policy of Prime Minister Aznar's party.
If this is the case, then the Spanish election Sunday will carry a significance that will transcend the borders of Spain, and which could make it one of the most decisive elections in the short history of modern democracy. For if the Spanish people vote against Aznar's party, then it will appear to the terrorists that they have succeeded in manipulating the domestic policy of an independent nation through an act of catastrophic terror. They will have succeeded in making a nation change its mind about who is to lead them -- and that would be a setback from which our world might never recover.
Factually this may not be the case: the vote may conceivably go against Aznar's party for reasons having nothing to do with today's terror. But to the terrorists, such a doubt will not exist. If Aznar is defeated, they will be convinced that it was their act that produced this result; and, God forbid, they may well be right.
This conclusion is the last conclusion that anyone could possibly want the terrorists to draw, because if they believe that they can alter the outcome of an election in Spain, it will inevitably tempt them to try to alter the outcome of future elections in other nations of Europe by a similar use of catastrophic terror.
Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that they might not also be tempted to use catastrophic terror to affect the next national election in the United States. Indeed, it is all too easy to concoct nightmare scenarios in which a series of coordinated attacks immediately before the election created a climate of such fear and anxiety that a serious question might be raised about the validity of the national election itself.
There are answers to such an approach, but they are ugly ones. And Reader Barbara Skolaut observes: "I wonder if the Spanish people have thought of what message they've just sent to the Basque separatists, whom they've been fighting for many years: Wantonly kill enough of us and we'll appease you, too."
It never ends. Unless, that is, you stand up to it. And reader Paul Young observes:
I think what needs to be mentioned is the fact that Iraq could have recently been thrown into a civil war but instead its leaders and people understood the situation and did not let the terrorists succeed. So Iraq "gets it" but Spain does not. Why am I supposed to believe that only the U.N. can legitimize Iraq's new government? It seems that Iraq has more to teach Europe than vice versa.
continues.....
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