Who knew? The Al-Qaeda terrorists who attacked in Spain had ties to Ansar Al-Islam. Ansar Al-Islam, if you recall, was the Kurdish Al-Qaeda group in northern Iraq that SecState Powell tied to Musab Abu Zarqawi, the 'Afghan Arab' allegedly treated for wounds sustained fighting our troops in Afghanistan in a Baghdad hospital for Baath big shots.

Christopher Hitchens comments on the notion that Madrid provoked Al-Qaeda by acting in Iraq...

The rightwingers seem to be avoiding answering this question - When the US pulled out of Saudia Arabia, did the terrorists win?

Let's see you spin that.

So, Daniel Shore is a right-winger?

Because he agrees with me that this was a victory for AQ.

Good post, Byron. It amazes me that so many intelligent people are willing to believe that the fact that al Qaeda will proclaim this as a victory is mutually exclusive from recognizing that the election itself was sound and positive. Not only is it a good sign that the any people turned on a government that lied to them, but that it was Spain in particular-- as I pointed out on my own blog (with some help from the NY Times), Spain is only a few decades removed from Fascist rule under Franco, and that apparently played a decent role here as well.

You have to understand the rightwing nutjob's point of view.

In their minds, there are only two kinds of people in the world: rightwing nutjobs, and terrorists. You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists, remember? Rightwing nutjobs just lost in Spain, so by definition terrorists have won!

Now, is this the result Al Qaida wanted? Who knows? AQ probably prefers the status quo in Iraq; it's good for recruiting, and it gives them another "failed state" to operate from. So to the extent this election leads to a resolution of the Iraq situation, I'd venture this is bad for AQ. AQ may just not know it yet, or they may know it but are just trying to convince people of their power by proclaiming they got the result they wanted in Spain.

Oh, and although Daniel Schorr isn't a rightwing nutjob, he has become considerably more conservative over the years. In any case, if he's arguing this result is good for AQ, I think he's wrong but time will tell.

not so bad now...the Spanish will be sending troops to Afghanistan in a few months when the new NATO force is set up. Al-Qaeda will continue to find some other pretext (probably Afghanistan) to target Spain and the rest of Europe. And BTW, Spain's contigent is second to Poland's in size in Iraq - the Poles have 2,500 troops.

So perhaps we would all be better served to calm down.

We did not announce that we were going to pull out of Saudi Arabia right after a major terror attack, Jason.

Since we have pulled out, Al-Qaeda has continued to kill innocent people in Saudi Arabia. So no dice that merely having troops on Saudi soil was Bin Laden's only (though originally stated) grievance. His grievance is with the twentieth, or perhaps in Spain's case, late 15th centuries. You guys have said nothing about Al-Qaeda being pissed with the Spanish for their 'crusader' forebears in 1492. Perhaps because you don't like to admit that these grievances run so deep, that most changes in U.S. policy aren't going to matter to Al Qaeda. "We are not fighting to get something from you, we are fighting to eliminate you." as one sheikh from Hezbollah put it.

And I'm not a right wing nutjob. I'm not even sure if I'm that conservative anymore. I bring up Christopher Hitchens, a leftist who favored the liberation of Iraq, for people who opposed the war to comment, and I get an awkward silence. They don't know how to respond to a case for war from the Left.

So don't assume that everyone who comments on the war or thinks that this was a win for Al-Qaeda is 'right wing'. That's a gross oversimplification.

Excellent post, Byron. I read Hitchens' piece on this and agreed completely. If one subscribes to the logic that the attacks were somehow provoked by the Spanish government, one must also subscribe to the notion that they could somehow have been prevented. Pretzel logic. And I'm a leftist anti-war nutcase whose husband fought in Operation Iraqi Oilfield Freedom.

Oh, and click my name for an EXCELLENT piece from the Alternet on this subject.

URL is http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18151

I'm still not persuaded, but I will acknowledge that this is a much more persuasive post than your original one, which unfortunately beginning with its title, Bush Lackeys Defeated" bore all the hallmarks of reflexive anti-Bushism without any further thinking. I remain very concerned that the nuance you're reading into the Spanish electorate's actions may be missed, or ignored, by al Queda.

Bah. "Qaeda." (Freudian slip, I'm hungry and was thinking of nachos ... ummm, queso!)

Re this quote from an earlier comment:

The rightwingers seem to be avoiding answering this question - When the US pulled out of Saudia Arabia, did the terrorists win?

This specific result was one that the terrorists at one time desired, but when and as it actually happened, neither in substance nor in perception was it a "terrorist win." No one not even someone drinking bin Ladin-brand Koolaid thinks we pulled out of Saudi Arabia for any reason other than that the regional threat to invade Saudi Arabia and the consequent threat to world energy supplies (yes, the basing of troops there was, in large part, all about oil) was eliminated last spring as the First Marine Division and the Army's Third Infantry Division converged on Baghdad.

Likewise, when the day comes that Iraq's new democracy is sufficiently stable that the last coalition forces can leave that country, that won't be a case of the terrorists winning, but rather, of them losing, and losing big.

Unifying theme: When the terrorists have been marginalized and made irrelevant, then the occurrence of an event that they happen to have called for in the past doesn't constitute a "win" for them. Unfortuantely, that's not obviously the case with the Spanish election.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is the latest poster boy for those desperately trying to find some justification for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
We know about the non-existant "weapons of mass destruction" and Iraq's ability to strike London on 45 minute's notice. And there are the dubious claims by the stealers of the 2000 presidential election that we are in Iraq to actually build democracy. (Gimme a break!)
When all else fails, there are the hints that Saddam was behind 9/11. Sometimes the connections are so far fetched one could see Saddam and Osama having fewer degrees of separation to Kevin Bacon than to each other.

Now, al-Zarqawi is supposedly linked to the Madrid bombings. That may very well be true. But very quickly the alleged connections get threadbare. Ansar Al-Islam, which al-Zarqawi is supposed to have links to, was active along the Iranian border with the Kurdish enclave of Iraq which was NOT under Saddam's control.
Saddam had no great love for either the Kurds or for armed groups who could present themselves as alternatives to Saddamite rule.
There have been unproven sightings of al-Qaeda operatives in Baghdad floated by the Bushies since a few months after 9/11. However, even though Iraq has been under US military control for almost a year, no solid link between Saddam and Osama has been found. Late last fall, there was the forged document, downplayed even by the administration, which placed Atta in Baghdad just months before 9/11. But that's the "best" the Saddam-Osama linkers have been able to do.

TX Pundit obviously subscribes to the "clash of civilizations" nonsense which fuels the far right worldview. According to this view, Western civilization and Islamic civilization are locked in a life or death struggle for control of the world. This is very interesting because it's one area where Islamic extremists and right wing fundamentalists think alike. And both would like to establish dictatorial theocracies based on their own narrow and selective interpretation of their holy books.
Worrying about what name Osama calls Spain is idiotic. What does it prove if he calls it "al-Andulus"? The Hebrew word for Spain is "Seferad". Does this mean that Sephardic Jews are plotting revenge for being driven out of the country by "Christian" monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492?*
I've met a few Turks and have have had some frank but civil discussions with them on regional politics. But at no time did they bring up the possibility of refighting the Battle of Vienna. That issue was settled by Jan Sobieski in 1683.

Trying to link fringe but dangerous terrorist groups to some grandiose Pan-Islamic conspiracy theory serves no purpose other than to incite hatred of Muslims and exploit fear for political reasons.
I am not a pacifist and think that Noam Chomsky is an idiot at best. I don't even like his linguistic theories. It is necessary to strike back at al-Qaeda as quickly and as forcefully as possible. These people want to harm me and you simply because we are Americans. They must be taken out of circulation one way or another. You won't find me shedding any tears over conditions in Guantánamo. If anything, I'm sorry that my taxes are being used to feed these scum.
That's why I'm totally disgusted by an administration whose already half-assed efforts in Afghanistan are being weakened by the obscene diversion of resources to the sideshow in Iraq.

Paul Krugman recently expressed feelings similar to mine regarding Iraq and the fight against terrorism:
The truth is that Mr. Bush, while eager to invoke 9/11 on behalf of an unrelated war, has shown consistent reluctance to focus on the terrorists who actually attacked America, or their backers in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

This reluctance dates back to Mr. Bush's first months in office. Why, after all, has his inner circle tried so hard to prevent a serious investigation of what happened on 9/11? There has been much speculation about whether officials ignored specific intelligence warnings, but what we know for sure is that the administration disregarded urgent pleas by departing Clinton officials to focus on the threat from Al Qaeda.

After 9/11, terrorism could no longer be ignored, and the military conducted a successful campaign against Al Qaeda's Taliban hosts. But the failure to commit sufficient U.S. forces allowed Osama bin Laden to escape. After that, the administration appeared to lose interest in Al Qaeda; by the summer of 2002, bin Laden's name had disappeared from Mr. Bush's speeches. It was all Saddam, all the time.

If it were al-Qaeda's intent to influence the Spanish election, they didn't go about it very well. A normal reaction by voters to such an event would have been to rally around the country's leaders at a time of crisis. It was the ruling Popular Party that shot itself in the foot by downplaying and attempting to cover up the al-Qaeda connection. For those who have a very short attention span, be reminded that Aznar and his cronies tried to blame the Basque ETA movement for the bombings so voters would not be reminded of the Middle East and thus the very unpopular involvement of Spain in Iraq. Spanish voters reacted to these lies by throwing the liars out of office.
That should be a lesson to anybody who attempts to manipulate a national tragedy for their political gain.

The Spanish voters acted in a normal way to devious leaders. To this I say:
¡Viva Zapatero!

* By contrast, Jews and Muslims peacefully co-existed in Spain for 700 years. When forced out of Spain by Ferdy and Izzy, a majority of the Jewish refugees were welcomed in Muslim lands such as the Ottoman Empire and North Africa.

I don't agree with everything you say, Tim (Chomsky's linguistic theories seem spot on), but I understand your reasoning in those places.

As for peaceful co-existence, Baghdad was probably the most heavily populated Middle Eastern city before Llyod George's religious determination to support a Jewish homeland and the Jewish migration there.

In Peace to End All Peace, David Fromkin points this co-existence out, and that the conflict we see today is because of several things, not the least being the anti-Semitism among the British soldiers. The Palestinians were willing to sell land to Jews, partly from coercion from Lloyd George's government but mostly from the desire to make money.

Knowing who our enemy is is critical to winning. The muddled thinking about Iraq and al Qaeda shows that this administration hasn't figured that out yet. It is obvious that our intelligence about Wahhabis, Iraq, al Qaeda, and elsewhere in the Mid East is lacking. It reminds me of Britain thinking their Egyptian expertise easily translated into Arab expertise, which lead to the missteps all through the first half of the 20th century.

What you think you know is different from what you know, and you better understand the difference.

"I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection" between Iraq and al Qaida.
- Secretary of State Colin Powell, 1/9/04

If you are worried about al-Qaeda seeing the Spain election as a victory for themselves, then you must also worry that they see our pullout of Saudi as a victory. WE may not agree it is a victory for them, but in their little minds, who knows what they are thinking? They get to check that goal off their list, and their egos are probably big enough to convince themselves that they scored a victory. It wouldn't be surprising if we found a bin Laden recruiting tape that holds up their "win" as justification that what they are doing is working.

To me, I don't think we can bother ourselves to care about how the terrorists view the results of their actions. They are going to spin things to their own advantage regardless of any outcome. They aren't ever going to stop until they blow themselves all up. Our only hope is to try to keep new terrorists from being created/indoctrinated, otherwise the cycle will continue to repeat itself.

Western civilization and Islamic civilization are not locked into a desperate struggle for control of the World...

Western civilization already controls the world, and the only way that Islamic civilization could wrest control away, is if Western civilization collapses, which, at this point, is unlikely.

The terrorists are only fighting a rear-guard action to preserve their own cultures, and they're not likely to win that struggle.
In a hundred years, Arabs will be Westernized, or, if not, about as relevant to the modern world as the bird-hunting stone-age tribes of South America.