OCT. 30 has just become a day to dread.
On Sunday in Spain, al Qaeda learned that by striking hard four days before a national tally, it could change the results.
Our election will take place on Nov. 2. Count four days back from our election and you get Oct. 30.
The Spanish election is a terrifying event, and not because the pro-Bush, pro-war party lost. The decision about which politicians to hire and fire belongs to the Spanish people, who exercised their democratic rights. No, the election is terrifying because of what the terrorists will make of it.
What happened in Spain is a new twist on an old dilemma. In the short run, terrorist attacks usually stiffen the spines of democracies. That’s what IRA strikes against the British did in the 1970s and 1980s, and it’s still the effect Palestinian terror strikes have on Israelis.
Where democracies have problems is in dealing with terrorism in the long run. Consider Israel. It grew so weary of its terror problem over the space of 25 years that it agreed to the Oslo peace process – which only made things more dangerous and gave new life to the old terror problem.
In this case, Spain’s grief and anger turned inward almost instantly after the bombs on Thursday that killed and wounded more than 1,600 people. And by focusing their anger inward and ousting the ruling party, the Spanish people have just handed the terrorists their first real, measurable triumph over a democratic country.
Victory must taste very sweet, especially when you consider how little al Qaeda has had to celebrate since 9/11. This sweet victory and the lessons that might be gleaned from it have given al Qaeda a new reason for being, and a new potential strategy to follow (even if it was not the primary force behind the attacks).
Osama bin Laden became emboldened when he saw how Bill Clinton turned tail and ran from Somalia in 1993 after the murder and torture of American servicemen in the “Black Hawk Down” incident. Bin Laden became convinced the United States was a paper tiger, and his conviction was only strengthened when we reacted so weakly to his terror attacks in the 1990s.
How weak must he think the West is now? Al Qaeda, or some offshoot, attacks Spain for the purpose of punishing that country for its brave role in the War on Terror and the war in Iraq. And in response, the Spanish people are actually accepting the blame – or rather, affixing the blame to their government, which is another version of the same thing.
It’s hard to imagine the same kind of result from a terror strike days before an election in the United States. After 9/11, the American people made it clear that we do not believe in trying to find complicated explanations when evil is done to us. We call it by name, we come together and we figure out how to extirpate it.
But it is distasteful to speculate on whether a late October attack would help or hurt President Bush or John Kerry’s chances. Still, there’s a new and potent danger on the horizon. The thirst of al Qaeda to build on its victory in Spain will be unquenchable.
The urgent effort to capture or kill Osama bin Laden before the end of the spring just got twice as urgent and twice as important. There’s reason to believe that the peril to us has just gotten greater than at any time since 9/11. Al Qaeda has something specific to aim for. We’d better stop it.
John Podhoretz’s new book is “Bush Country: How Dubya Became a Great President While Driving Liberals Insane” (bush-country.com).
