Marshall on the Spanish elections, Iraq, and the war on terror:

America and Europe never saw eye-to-eye on how to take down the network of terror cells and associated Islamist terror groups we know as al Qaida. But the disagreements have been greatly overstated. The heart of the matter, the rub, has always been about whether the 'war on terror' in any way included or was in any respect advanced by overthrowing the government of Iraq.

(To frame the matter ungenerously but with real precision, the question came down to whether you fight back against the terrorists by striking back at the terrorists or at someone else.)

Whatever else they thought of the Iraq war, very few people in Europe saw any real logic to the (terror war = Iraq war) equation. Some supported the Iraq war for other reasons. But few saw the two connected as the Bush administration tried to present them. And not a few saw the Iraq adventure as positively counterproductive to stemming the tide of Isalmist terror.

Whoever you think is right or wrong in this, that is the nature of the rift over the 'war on terror'.

Now, if that's the war as you see it, that Iraq war was either irrelevant to fighting terror or would itself produce more terorrism, then the apparent response of the Spaniards doesn't seem at all difficult to fathom. Nor is it reducible to facile claims of appeasements.

He also makes an important point that not many people are talking about: Nobody, absolutely nobody knew this attack was coming, no security warnings, no color-coded alerts, nothing. Yikes.