winning

thoughts are generally muddled this morning (whoops - overslept) but just to hold my place, there's this from a friedman column today:

If Mr. Zapatero goes through with his troop withdrawal from Iraq, Islamist terrorists will attribute it to the Madrid bombing. This big picture will absolutely encourage them to try this tactic, perfected in Israel and now imported to Spain, in other European or U.S. elections — to tilt the vote one way or another.

"The Spanish Civil War tested only weapons," said the Israeli political theorist Yaron Ezrahi. "The terrorism we have seen in Israel, and may soon see more of in Europe, is testing the fabric of democratic societies. What is being tested in Spain is this question: Does it pay for terrorists to try to hijack democratic elections? We have a clear-cut challenge here, and it must be met with an equally clear-cut response. Are leaders of Western nations going to reward the terrorists in their attempt to hijack democratic elections in a major European state or make them fail?"

still trying to figure out where my thinking is on this...