Kevin Drum has a
post up discussing the results of the election in Spain. He posits that a reason for the results might be:
So another possibility is that the voters (or at least some of them) were upset that Aznar's support for the Iraq war was responsible for al-Qaeda targeting Spain, which seems to be the theme of this Washington Post story. This would be a considerable victory for al-Qaeda and would reflect very poorly indeed on the Spanish electorate. It also doesn't smell right to me.
There's already a lively discussion of this going on at Calpundit, but since it's quite full and unthreaded, I thought I'd bring the discussion here as well.
Let me start by saying that I don't think Kevin is right in saying that in this particular situation that if AQ is the culprit and the bomb changed the course of the election, that AQ somehow masterminded getting the opposition party into power and this somehow benefits AQ. I especially don't follow his reasoning that having the socialists win because bombs turned off the populace to the PP is a bad thing.
I'll go as far as to say that if terrorists (not just AQ, but any terrorists) have a political agenda and are able to time terrorist attacks to coincide with an election, and manage to affect the outcome of the election in their favor, that's a bad thing. However, I just don't think this is the case in Spain even if people were swayed to vote against Aznar because they thought he invited an AQ attack by allying with Bush.
Let's look at the assumptions, shall we? What happens if the socialists win? They pull out of Iraq--but Iraq was never the focus of AQ to begin with. The PM elect says that he will be tough on terrorism of all stripes as well, so at least rhetorically it's not as if Spain suddenly becomes AQ sympathizers. So I'm not sure how PP losing helps AQ except in a Bushian worldview sense of "if you're not in Iraq, you're helping the terrorists."
Well, unless you think AQ actually believes that Bush is tougher on terrorists than his competitors. Heh...if they do, they won't know what hit them...(and I was so looking forward to Howard Dean creaming them...oh well...it will have to be Kerry, I guess)
Well, beyond that, I leave it to you to discuss the quote above or the entirety of Kevin's post.
