I don't know about you, but I have thoroughly enjoyed watching the neocons foaming at the mouth over the Spanish elections. You have got to love some of these quotes:
The new Spanish government's decision to respond to the attack by Al Qaeda by going ahead with plans to pull its troops from Iraq constitutes the most dangerous moment we've faced since 9/11. -- Thomas L. Friedman
This is a watershed event. It will change how Al Qaeda thinks about the world. It will change how Europeans see the world. It will constrain American policy for years to come. -- David Brooks
It's a spectacular result for Islamist terrorism, and a chilling portent of Europe's future. -- Andrew Sullivan
Wow. You can almost see these guys pausing to breathe into a paper bag as they write this stuff. Let's see if we can help them calm down a bit.
An important axiom of the neoconservative ideology is that militant Islamic extremists are a group of sinister super-geniuses. After all, you can't really get all that worked up about a global threat to freedom and democracy that is run by a bunch of idiots. But just for the sake of argument, I'm going to explore the position that the attack on Madrid was actually a really dumb thing for al Qaeda to do. To do that, I'm going to have to delve into some facts that my neocon friends missed as they wrote their columns in a Valium-induced stupor.
First, the PSOE (or, as the neocons so gleefully refer to it, the Socialist Party) had promised during the campaign ( before 11-M) that they would withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq unless the United Nations took over the operation. I don't know why, but just about every column I read by a neoconservative seemed to leave that part about the United Nations out. They made it seem like the Spaniards were just hightailing it out of there, when the truth is they would be more than happy to stay- as long as it was as part of a UN-led coalition. If the possibility of Spanish troops leaving Iraq is truly as unthinkably awful as the neocons make it out to be, then by all means- let's go to the United Nations and put them in charge of Iraq! What are we waiting for?
Ahh, but no. We can't do that. We're neoconservatives. We hate the United Nations. In fact, we hate every other country on the planet, except maybe Great Britain, but only because Winston Churchill was from there.
And of course, al Qaeda knows this. They know that there is no way Bush will go to the United Nations and say he's sorry for being such a jerk. So it seems like a relatively safe play to them, to attack innocent Spaniards as punishment for their government supporting the US in Iraq. They obviously were helped in this effort by the abject stupidity of the ruling Populist Party in attempting to pin the blame on ETA, but that point has been belabored enough.
But what, exactly, has al Qaeda gained by this effort? As far as I can tell, not much. If the Spanish soldiers leave Iraq, it will not impact US legitimacy in that country- we don't have any as it is. Does it embarass the United States on the world stage? Sure it does, but we've been embarassing ourselves for awhile now. The upside for al Qaeda in this attack, or any other attack on a member of the coalition, is practically zero. They will not weaken the resolve of the US, and no one else in the coalition really matters that much.
So let's consider the downside. We're going to suspend disbelief for a second and think about what would happen if the US called al Qaeda's bluff and decided to hand over control of Iraq to the UN. Suddenly, the Spaniards are back in the game, as are a whole slew of other nations- many of whom have troops and money they can contribute to the effort of securing Iraq. Even more valuable, the UN possesses the legitimacy to oversee Iraq during this interim period and help it transition to a government of its own choosing. Clearly, the downside is far worse for al Qaeda than the upside. They are relying on the fact that the probability of the US following an international course of action is so low, which is a risky strategy to pursue when you don't gain very much on the upside.
So it turns out that al Qaeda might not be as smart as the neocons have led us to believe. Their best shot at survival rests on keeping the countries fighting in Iraq isolated from the rest of the world for as long as possible. If they continue to attack other members of the coalition, they will simply be adding to the list of countries that will work through the UN in order to fight against them, which will cause their ultimate demise. They think they're removing countries from the US coalition, when they're really just adding countries to a much larger coalition that will be their ultimate demise. The sooner the US government sees this fact, the sooner we destory al Qaeda.
Tom, Dave, Andy- breathe easy. It looks like al Qaeda may be even dumber than you are.