Eric Olsen writes this mouthful:
"I only care what justifications the twisted mass murderers of innocents and civilians make in terms of how they facilitate intelligence gathering and predicting their behavior – all with an eye toward finding and liquidating them and preventing further attacks. The point isn’t to respond to the accusations and justifications of the terrorists, the point is to find and eliminate them as quickly and permanently as possible.
And regarding the Iraq accusations, does anyone notice the screaming, grand irony of al Qaeda claiming that their justification for mass murder in Spain is the Spanish government’s support for the war in Iraq? I thought al Qaeda and Iraq had nothing to do with each other. I thought Iraq had nothing to do with the War on Terror."
Exactly, you can’t have your "Iraq is not connected to terrorism" cake and eat it too. Aznar’s attempt at damage control (trying to make people believe the ETA was behind the bombings when early evidence pointed to Al Qaida) backfired big time, and it’s a good thing his party was punished. (I lambasted similar cover-ups by the French government in my previous post.) There are circumstances when you can’t afford to be a politician instead of a statesman.
However, the Spaniards whose motivation behind their socialist vote is their resentment of their country’s participation in the war in Iraq, are making a huge mistake we’ll all come to regret. Their misguided protest is self-defeating by giving terrorists the power to influence elections. I’m very concerned by the consequences of this election, both for Spain (which made a lot of economic progress under Aznar), and for the whole western world, where terrorists are now encouraged to weight on politics, considering how successful they’ve been, following what has to be acknowledged was perfect timing. The FT has a short profile of Zapatero, the forthcoming prime minister.
Meanwhile, isn’t it astonishing that the Germans are a calling for "common assessment" of the terrorism danger to "coordinate how to respond"? Shouldn’t has this been made 1/2 years ago? This is the proof that the proclaimed solidarity and shared concern after September 11 was lip service. Now Europeans can’t pretend there’s no war on terror going on. Here’s hoping people don’t vote for the peacenik appeasers.