MAR. 15, 2004: A WIN FOR TERROR

Terrorism has won a mighty victory in Spain. The culprits who detonated those bombs of murder on 3/11 intended to use murder to alter the course of Spanish democracy – and they have succeeded.

In the months since the attacks on the World Trade Center, we have all heard – and ourselves often repeated – much brave talk about how terror cannot prevail, how justice must inevitably win through, etc. etc. etc.

The news from Spain suggests how very wrong those hopes were.

People are not always strong. Sometimes they indulge false hopes that by lying low, truckling, appeasing, they can avoid danger and strife. Sometimes they convince themselves that if only they give the Cyclops what he wants, they will be eaten last. And this is what seems to have happened in Spain.

Unlike the 9/11 attacks in the United States – which were intended as acts of propaganda to influence the Arab and Muslim world – the 3/11 attacks against Spain were acts of propaganda aimed at the local market. And again unlike 9/11, this time the terrorists succeeded brilliantly. They helped to defeat a government committed to joining the war against them – and helped elect a government whose leading members not so quietly dream of a separate accommodation.

From a human point of view, the carnage of 3/11 is a tragedy without purpose or meaning. But from a political point of view, 3/11 was aimed at a result – and it achieved it. The new socialist government of Spain will be a far less willing ally of the United States. Indeed, this attack against Spain may well succeed in pre-emptively knocking Spain out of the war in the way that Pearl Harbor was intended – but failed – to knock out the United States in 1941.

Lesson: terrorism can work. Prediction: therefore expect more of it. Expect more terrorism aimed at the United Kingdom, against Australia, against Poland, and – ultimately – against the United States. For the terrorists must now wonder: If murder can influence elections in Spain – why not in the United States?

In the United States, the terrorists have to make a very fine calculation: Which would hurt President Bush, their supereme enemy, more – to attack or not to attack?

Those who know American politics well would probably answer: choice number two. The more time goes by without a terrorist attack, the less President Bush benefits from his prestige as a war leader – and the more the national conversation turns to new subjects on which President Bush holds less of an advantage. On the other hand, the terrorists may be less sophisticated. They may hope to defeat their enemy George W. Bush in the same way that they defeated their enemy Jose Aznar. In which case – brace yourselves.

12:38 AM