Taken from
No Vote for Al Qaeda.
Now, I generally like Tom Friedman, but his, and everyone else's line about the terrorists winning with Spain's election has bothered me. Mr. Friedman's article today brought it into specific relief.
See more below:
First, he compares the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the Spanish Civil War. Ok, makes sense. Both sides of either conflict are/were trying out the very latest in weapons of war.
He says that Al Qaeda's newest export is influencing elections with a major bombing. It's been tried and perfected in Israel by ensuring the election of hard-liners willing to fight the Palestinian terrorists, he says.
But it's not only types of violence that were perfected there. It was also there where Palestinian terrorists regularly attempted to hijack democratic elections on the eve of the vote. Liberal Labor Party candidates in Israel, throughout the 1980's and 1990's, always had to hold their breath that there would not be a big terrorist attack on the eve of an election. Because if there was, swing voters would usually move to the right and the Likud candidate would benefit. The Palestinian terrorists always "voted" Likud, not Labor. They wanted hard-liners at the helm in Israel because they would build more settlements and further radicalize and destabilize the situation.
He then says that this is completely the same as the Spanish election, where the hard-liners were ousted.
If Mr. Zapatero goes through with his troop withdrawal from Iraq, Islamist terrorists will attribute it to the Madrid bombing. This big picture will absolutely encourage them to try this tactic, perfected in Israel and now imported to Spain, in other European or U.S. elections ? to tilt the vote one way or another.
So, let me get this right: Muslim terrorists want hard-liners in power in Israel, because it will make the situation boil over (re: militarize the government, put troops in held territories, etc). The Muslim terrorists ALSO want to take the hard-liners out of power in Spain, because they are occupying a Muslim nation, and have been viewed as a military enemy.
So, according to his logic jump, the terrorists win if radical warhawks are in power (the brilliant fly-paper strategy) because Friedman says that's how the terrorists have been doing elections for years; AND the terrorists win if socialist doves are in power (as in Spain) because Friedman says that they're capitulating to the terrorist's demands.
Um, is there anyway that the terrorists don't win?