A Good Thing It Was, Too, for the Health of Inter-Community Relations, to Pull the Spanish Troops Out of Iraq

Sometimes you read an article that leads to an obvious question, and it's very frustrating when the writer doesn't ask it

complains International Herald Tribune reader Richard Kalvar.

Apparently there are hundreds of Islamist militants preparing terrorist strikes in Spain (Spain still thwarting Islamists' terror plot, March 14). The obvious question is why?

The Madrid bombings gave the Islamists what they wanted: a change in government and the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq. So what do they want now?

I'm sure there are a lot of informed people in Spain who could enlighten us about this, but of course they have to be asked.

Indeed, given what Elaine Sciolino reports from Madrid ("the Spanish police continue to uncover and thwart new plots involving Islamic militants" and "officials estimate that there are hundreds of people scattered in cells around the country committed to attacking centers of power in Spain"), even more pertinent questions that she might have asked (if only herself) might have been

• To what extent was it wrong to conclude that the Madrid bombings were the result of Aznar's decision to support the Bush administration's 'crimes' in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere?; and
• To what extent was it demagoguery or irresponsible wishful thinking — not to imitate the left's vocabulary and call it an outright lie — to suggest that pulling out Spain's troops would bring about an end to Islamic attacks as well as goodwill from the country's Islamic population?

Elaine Sciolino mentions European governments dealing with

a terrorist threat that is not yet fully understood.

You said it, buster.