Forums

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
This was AQ's most well-thought-out, and successful, move yet. (I'm assuming it was AQ, of course. If it was ETA, then the Spanish look a bit more foolish right now.) They actually overturned a government by scaring a population. This should make Spain much more secure in the long run. This new guy must be one of the phantom leaders who told Kerry that he has to win.

I think you assume too much. Matt Yglesias said it better than me:

What a difference an assumption makes:

• As Joe Gandleman has pointed out (see also here), the Socialists have promised to withdraw Spain from the Iraq coalition in the event of their election. Which is to say, of course, that the terrorists got what they wanted - assuming that Al Qa'eda was indeed behind the attack - to deter a European country from further participation in Iraq, after punishing it for its involvement to this point.

Well, yes, that's true if you add two auxiliary premises.

• (a) al-Qaeda wants to deter European countries from further participation in Iraq.
  (b) al-Qaeda believed that launching the attack was likely to help the Socialist Party.

How strong are those assumptions? Well, the evidence for (a) seems to be that al-Qaeda is interested in killing western soldiers serving in Iraq. This, however, is consistent with them either wanting to drive the troops out, or else hoping more troops come so there will be more targets.

The evidence for (b) is that the Socialists did, in fact, win the election. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, however, the conventional wisdom was that this would help the PP as they would benefit from a "rally 'round the flag" effect. Certainly 9/11 was a great boon to the political popularity of George W. Bush (and other incumbents, notably Giuliani and Pataki) and rather predictably so.

At any rate, everyone's beliefs about these matters are so obviously going to be colored by their partisan political preferences that I don't know if there's a particular point in trying to argue for one version or another. It just seems worth pointing out that it's certainly not clear that this is what the terrorists were trying to achieve. Personally, I very much do not favor withdrawing troops from Iraq, and will be disappointed if that is the ultimate outcome of this tragedy. One ray of hope is that the circumstances of the attack would give the Socialist Party a possible excuse for flip-flopping were they so inclined. I doubt, however, that they will be.

linky