Terrorism, bombings hit Spain, European reaction

The terrorist attack in Spain may or may not be the work of Al Qaeda or some other Islamofascist terrorist network. But based on what's coming out of Europe, one thing is clear: The Europeans are starting to "get it".

As France's Le Monde put it:

"If she did not know it yet, she knows it now: Europe is part of the battlefield of hyper-terrorism ... Nothing, evidently, no cause, no context, no supposedly political objective, justifies this kind of [large scale] terrorism ... If the trail back to Al-Qaeda is confirmed, Europeans should rethink the war against Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, as did the United States after the attacks of September 11, 2001."

Many Europeans before this incident quietly believed that while 9/11 was a tragedy, that really, America deserved what it got. That various unspecified "American policies" directly led to 9/11. They were wrong, of course, for no one has ever been able to articulate a specific set of US policies that could possibly justify the carnage of 9/11. But one can almost forgive Europeans who felt this way for their views. After all, America is far away to them and the two towers, seen on TV, just look like a couple of buildings, not the city sized structures they actually were in reality.

Terrorists, generally speaking, are not the brightest bulbs. They may have a few intelligent people in their ranks but by definition terrorists tend to be zealots of a lost cause. And there is usually a reason why they're losing so badly that they have to resort to attacking civilians with bombs. But the real indication of the idiocy of terrorists is that they never seen capable of learning. 9/11 was not a triumph for terrorists, it has spelled their doom. Afghanistan is no longer a save haven. Iraq will be relatively westernized, secular, and democratized. And the US now has a long term permanent presence in the region that the likes of Osama Bin Laden could only have imagined in his nightmares.

And the result? The terrorists then went after Australia over in Indonesia cementing the public's support behind the war on terror. And now Spain. One of the major newspapers there has boldly claimed that they are "99%" sure that this was the work of Islamic based terrorists in retaliation for the government's support of the US. The newspaper, aligned with the opposition socialists, apparently thinks that this will somehow harm the government in the upcoming elections. Perhaps I'll be proven wrong but I suspect the opposite will happen. The Spanish are not cowards. They will not be cowed by terrorists. They will want to strike back with fury. Democracies, historically, are quite predictable in how they react to sucker punches. Perhaps history courses should be required for journalism majors?

When even Le Monde is recognizing the reality of terrorism you know things have changed. Perhaps they have realized what Americans realized on 9/12/2001 -- imagine if we let this go on in the long term? Imagine these same terrorists with nuclear weapons? Weapons supplied by say someone like Saddam Hussein either today or in the future when sanctions get lifted? We can't wait for that day. We must act now lest we suffer far greater carnage in the future. That path led us to Afghanistan and later Iraq. So to the Europeans who have suddenly woken up to this new reality I say, "Welcome to the party, pal!"