A comment on the Spanish Atrocity and its aftermath

I've been mulling the events of last week in Spain (the bombings and the subsequent electoral aftershock). A couple of times I've started writing an article about it, and the article never went anywhere, so I stopped. Today, the Wall Street Journal's Best of The Web Today  posted Rudyard Kipling's Danegeld, and drew a parallel with the actions of Spain's voters.

What gets me is that this particular Danegeld shows a link between Al-Qaeda and Iraq (Spain removing troops from Iraq in response to Al-Qaeda's actions) and sets a precedent that Al-Qaeda can manipulate an election. As many other people have said, I'd not like to be in a European country around the time of elections there. I don't know if Al-Qaeda will try the same thing here - the last attack didn't result in a positive outcome for them. But I'll be careful in October anyway, and I won't be surprised in long-distance (train and air travel) slows during October, and malls might take in less sales than otherwise.