Near as I can tell, the point of Hitch's take on Spain is that Al Qaeda is more or less prone to attack everybody regardless of what they do, so there isn't much of a way to deter or appease them. Agreed to an extent.

But two points come to mind:

1) Just because Al Qaeda is undeterable and unappeasable, it doesn't necessarily follow, or even possibly follow that their desire to attack a given country is not informed by the actions of that country, in this case Aznar's decision to neglect the will of his own people in favor of that of Bush. Remember, Osama bin Laden is, as Tom Friedman once described him, a combination of Charles Manson and Jack Welch: Crazy, but not stupid. Terrorism in nature has a randomized element to it -- that's why it's so terrifying, yo. But again, it doesn't necessarily follow that all targets of terrorism serve no purpose outside of a vague "you are Western infidels, I fuck with you now!"

2) I should have read Salon's great piece on Spanish politics first. There has been waaaay too much bumper-stickerism from the punditocracy and the blogosphere on the Spainish elections. This has come in two forms, either insultingly superficial and inaccurate ("Spain chose to appease the terrorists after the attack"), or insultingly insulting ("Spain was bullied by terrorists into voting for socialists!"). Salon's piece, which traces some aspects of the current Spanish political climate back to Franco and others, is a breath of fresh air.

Stop looking at the Spanish election through such superficialities, all of you! That goes for the right ("this proves that they aren't serious about fighting terrorism"), and a little bit for the left too ("Aznar's gone because of Iraq!"). Naturally, it's all more complicated than that. Aznar proved he wasn't serious about telling the truth about terrorism. And Iraq is relevant to the election in that it was sold as a means to fight terrorism, and naturally it couldn't do that in the short term, and that's what 11-M horrifically showed.