March 17, 2004
Thank you, Spain ...
... for rolling over and playing dead after your train attacks. Now you too have a "Black Hawk Down," a public demonstration that you lack the will of your terrorist enemy.
Islamic terrorists must be feeling pretty happy about now. Every attack they mount succeeds beyond their wildest dreams. Osama wanted hijacked airplanes to crash into the World Trade Center; he is shown in a videotape giddy that the towers, to his surprise, fully collapsed, and fairly quickly. The train bombing in Madrid easily toppled Spain's ruling party and will likely lead to withdrawal of its troops in Iraq.
Mainly, however, you have just radically increased the U.S. risk of a major terrorist attack before our November election and at no real net gain in your own security (see this column by Mark Steyn). George Will believes, however, that such an event would be less likely to have its intended effect of ousting President Bush.
Europe is constitutionally incapable of learning anything, is it. Let's appease Hitler, let's appease the terrorists in our midst, and the problem will just go away. If you blow up a bunch of our innocents, well, we must have had it coming for daring to displease a terror master.
Here's a gem from a Washington Post editorial: "It is clear that using force is not the answer to resolving the conflict with terrorists," European Commission President Romano Prodi said yesterday.
As David Frum writes:
People are not always strong. Sometimes they indulge false hopes that by lying low, truckling, appeasing, they can avoid danger and strife. Sometimes they convince themselves that if only they give the Cyclops what he wants, they will be eaten last. And this is what seems to have happened in Spain.
