A Norwegian blogger's take on 3/11:
Al-Qaeda behind Madrid massacre?
Friday March 12, 2004 17:12 CET by Bjørn Stærk
Evidence indicates that al-Qaeda was behind the attacks in Madrid, or someone trying to look like al-Qaeda, (it's too early to tell these apart). In an e-mail al-Qaeda has supposedly taken responsibility for the attack, and Spanish police has found detonators and a tape with recordings from the Koran in a van. The scale, the coordination, the date - 9/11 + 6 months, or 9/11/01 + 911 + 1 days - much points to al-Qaeda or an al-Qaeda imposter.
One piece of evidence I've only seen mentioned in Norway is a document a terrorist research group at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment found on an Islamist website. The document surveys strategies for forcing the coalition out of Iraq. It mentions Spain as a convenient target, and the election this week as a convenient time to carry it out:
The research group regularly gathers information which appears on Islamist website on the Internet, but doesn't have time to go through everything in detail. After the attack in Madrid yesterday, they did a search on "Spain" in the documents they have gathered, and made an interesting discovery. ..
- What we found was a 42 page strategy document, where an anonymous author discusses what strategy to use to force the coalition lead by the US out of Iraq, says researcher Thomas Hegghammer. .. It concludes that one should go for a domino effect, where one first pressures one country to pull out, so the others may follow. The author points to Spain as that country in the coalition which it would be most convenient to attack.
Of the 42 pages in the document, which is written in Arabic, and was probably made last autumn, there are six pages about Spain.
"To make the Spanish government pull out of Iraq, the Muslim resistance forces must direct blows against the Spanish forces, and these must be joined by information about the situation in Iraq .. one must take maximum advantage of the approaching election in Spain in March next year .. we expect the Spanish government won't withstand more than two, maximum three, such attacks, because of pressure from public opinion. If they nevertheless should remain in Iraq, their continued presence will become an important issue for the Socialist Party."
The information in the document indicates that the person who wrote it is familiar with Spain and Spanish politics. It contains a discussion on Spanish election results all the way back to 1982.
The document refers to attacks on Spanish forces in Iraq, not Spanish civilians in Spain, but the logic is the same wherever the attacks are carried out: Attack America's allies until one of them breaks. Any crack in the coalition will be an important propaganda victory, and increase the likelihood of more cracks. It's a rational tactic, aimed specifically at those forces who are looking for excuses to pull out of Iraq. In Norway these forces are represented by the Centre Party and the Socialist Left. Attacks on European forces in Iraq, as this document proposes, may be more successful than attacks in Europe itself, but then again they may not, and the terrorist is always biased towards random, spectacular violence.
The message is: This is the price you pay for helping the Americans. That is a message many Europeans will listen to. The question is how many there are of them. Terrorism always turns some people against you, but it also turns other people towards your preferred point of view, and the terrorists are counting on more Europeans of the latter than the former kind. That preferred point of view is not approval of terrorism or support of the terrorists' goal. All that's required is for many Spaniards to reach the conclusion that the price is too high, and who are they to risk their lives for some insane American imperialist adventure? European anti-Americanism is a powerful tool in the hands of skilled propagandists. I don't have al-Qaeda's belief in the power of random slaughter, but I'm not confident that they're wrong about how Europeans will react, especially if they manage to make a campaign out of this. (Another bomb failed to go off earlier today.) Everyone will claim to stand united against terrorism. Everyone always does. But there's "yes we stand united against terrorism in all forms" and then there's "yes we stand united against terrorism in all forms, but what are we doing in Iraq anyway, and haven't we brought this on ourselves by aligning ourselves with the insane policies of the Bush administration?"
That is the real test here. Will we settle for the usual condemnations of terrorism, then continue as before, apologizing for, understanding and downplaying the threat of Islamic terrorism, while we reserve our true outrage for the Americans and Israelis, or will we update our maps to reflect the post-9/11 terrain? Words of sympathy are not enough. Al-Qaeda counts on sympathy to increase our fear that we're next in line. Anger is actually more appropriate. It's the ingredient we've been missing these last years, for while we always condemn terrorists attacks and show sympathy for their victims, we never really get angry with the monsters who are behind it. I noticed that prime minister Kjell Magne Bondevik described yesterday's attack as an example of "evil" on TV2, using a word (ondskap) that is quite strong, (big-E evil). That may be a good sign, and I'll be watching for more.
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