Juan Cole has an outstanding post in which he concludes that the Spanish elections are not, as the right has been braying all week, a victory for Al Qaeda. Quite the opposite, in fact -- the Zapatero government will switch the focus to the battle against terrorist networks, not states, which was the crucial point of the neoconservative pitch for war in Iraq: that the states that harbor terrorism are as much our enemies as the terrorists themselves. But this state-centric doctrine has been a major distraction, and has let Osama stay on the loose for two years while we spend vast sums to topple a regime that posed us no threat. Cole's analysis of why Iraq was no threat is very interesting:
The Bush administration cynically took advantage of the American public's anger and fear after September 11 and channeled it against the regime of Saddam Hussein, which had had nothing to do with September 11 and which never could be involved in such a terrorist operation on American soil because its high officers knew exactly the retribution that would be visited on them. Only an asymmetrical organization could think of a September 11, because it has no exact return address. Even for a state to give aid to such an operation against a super power would be suicide-- how could you be sure the superpower would not find out about the aid?
We're fighting asymmetrical, nonstate organizations by destroying the states in which they operate. That's guaranteed to fail, because the organizations will just move to different states. Maybe the new Spanish government will help people worldwide realize this fact.
Matthew Yglesias addresses similar issues in the American Prospect. Also very much worth a read.