It's a Smaller World These Days

As much as I'd like to move beyond what has recently seemed a continuing series of disagreements with people whom I'd prefer to agree with, some counter-assessments of the Spanish election compel me to respond. Craig Henry writes of the common declaration that Spain capitulated to terrorism:

I thought warbloggers were in favor of democracy. But it turns out that they only like elections when their side wins. They seem to confuse allies with satellites.

Now, there's some room to believe that Craig is addressing a more stringent position than the most common of this genre, but that's not an explicit aspect of his post. Therefore, it doesn't seem superfluous to mention that a basic truth of human nature is that people will "only like elections when their side wins," and I haven't heard anybody suggest that the outgoing party ought to stage a coup for the good of the War on Terror, nor that the U.S. government ought to install a puppet regime.

The Spanish voters did what they did, and a fair number of Americans believe it to have been a mistake. If terrorism sweeps Europe (and perhaps the States), particularly just before elections, then those Americans will have been correct. If that turn of events doesn't occur — fan-tastic.

Something to which Craig links, however, is a little more cumbersome to address. Joe Carter finds in reactions to the Madrid attack proof of a theory (italics in original, here and below):

After more than 900 days after 9/11 we still refuse to accept the idea that al Qaeda is living out a fantasy idealogy. Instead we search endlessly for the objective, for the meaning behind the act of terror. If none can be found, then we are forced to create them.

Sincerely, I don't intend the offense that is possible to take at this suggestion, but "fantasy ideology" has the ring of those hypotheses that please because they package an esoteric, contrarian view in a buzz phrase that, in this case, absolves the speaker of the need for contemplation. "How comprehend his face, when face he has none?" Ishmael asked about the whale. Terrorism has a face. As Dan Darling points out in a superb analysis of the Spanish attacks, it has purpose by definition. Both purpose and perpetrator may be psychotic, but the acts are directed. Yet Carter writes:

As children of the Enlightenment we simply can't fathom how such acts of terror could be committed without a rational basis, without a reason. And as the offspring of the Judeo-Christian heritage our culture cannot comprehend why our enemies would want to destroy us, completely annihilate us, simply because we are their enemy. Because of our cultural myopia we continue our attempts to see the terrorists not as they are but in terms that make sense to us. Even when we know we are dealing with Cortez we look for Quetzalcoatl.

The Cortez/Aztec reference derives from an essay by Lee Harris, according to whom Montezuma reacted to Cortez as he did because the Aztec leader had no experience through which to comprehend the European. The comparison begins to erode immediately: The privileged among al Qaeda and its discreet supporters studied in the West. Some are international businessmen, and even some of the operatives, as we know, have spent years in the countries that they seek to terrorize. For our part, the West has been dealing with the Middle East and Muslims for centuries. Yes, there are distinctions; yes, there are dramatic differences in worldview. Nonetheless, there is a degree of mutual understanding that goes infinitely beyond the arrival of a strange race from the midst of an endless expanse of unexplored ocean.

By way of evidence, Harris notes the video of bin Laden discussing September 11:

Nowhere is this more tellingly illustrated than on the videotape of Osama bin Laden discussing the attack. The tape makes clear that the final collapse of the World Trade Center was not part of the original terrorist scheme, which apparently assumed that the twin towers would not lose their structural integrity. But this fact gave to the event — in terms of al Qaeda's fantasy ideology — an even greater poignancy: Precisely because it had not been part of the original calculation, it was therefore to be understood as a manifestation of divine intervention. The 19 hijackers did not bring down the towers — God did.

That wasn't the impression that I got from that tape, at all. Rather, while there had been some disagreement about the probable damage of the attack, the complete collapse of the buildings was somewhat of a surprise, and al Qaeda attributed it (at least for propaganda purposes) to the will of Allah. I hate to dilute this particular atrocity, but the evocation of Allah in that video seemed to me of the same sort as comments made about any event seen in religious context that goes better than expected.

The distinction between Harris's phrasing and mine may seem subtle, but it opens and important window. Al Qaeda doesn't rely on a "fantasy ideology" as the core component of its attacks. It didn't fill the Shoe Bomber's sneakers with blessed sand. So, drawing the line for purposive intention between coordination and political timing is entirely arbitrary.

Terrorists launder money. They traffic in counterfeit identities. They arrange training and safehouses and codewords and meetings. They team up, plan, and execute their attacks with some degree of precision. Where, in this, does "fantasy ideology" fit in as an organizing (or disorganizing) principle? If Spanish authorities had come across one of the Madrid terrorists in the process of constructing his bomb, they would have rightly concluded that he wasn't just mixing random components based on magical thinking. Whatever the motivation, there is no reason to believe that the timing of the attacks was chance, and there is a growing litany of reasons to believe the opposite.

The evidence — even that of ideological substance — suggests that the elections were a consideration. Moreover, even if Spain's involvment in Iraq was minimal and largely symbolic, and even if the socialists keep up the larger fight against terrorism, the Spanish voters certainly stoked any fantasies about their country that the Islamists might have kept smoldering these many eras.