President Bush has always sought to equate the war on terror with the war in Iraq, as if one equaled the other. Indeed, that's how he sold the invasion of Iraq: Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and sought more; Iraq had ties to Al-Qaida and could supply it with those weapons. Take down Iraq, destroy the weapons and the terrorist connections, and you make the world safer from the threat of terrorist attacks.

The simultaneous train attacks in Madrid last week blew Bush's argument out of the water. The attacks may also have knocked the fight against terror off its tracks, to the world's great detriment.

Bush's equation never really made sense. The need for an aggressive war on terror, carried out by a strong and unified international coalition, was urgent before Sept. 11 and grew imperative afterward.

The invasion of Iraq was an invasion of choice dressed up in the rhetoric of imperative; a year later, there have been no WMD discoveries, nor has evidence surfaced of ties between Iraq and Al-Qaida. What the Iraq war did do was divide the antiterror coalition.

The people of Spain, along with the French, the Russians, the Germans and others, understood well the difference between fighting terror and fighting Saddam Hussein. Their solidarity with Americans after Sept. 11 was powerful. They wholly understood and supported the necessity of taking the fight to the enemy, whether in Afghanistan or elsewhere.

They knew, too, that they might just as easily be targeted as the United States. The Spanish, especially, worked hard to root out the Al-Qaida members and sympathizers in Spain, and to uncover how Spanish cities had been used by Al-Qaida to plan its attacks.

But the Spanish -- along with most other peoples of the world -- never did believe that invading Iraq was a necessary or constructive action. Only 1 in 10 supported their government's decision to join with the United States and Britain in carrying out the invasion.

Al-Qaida or someone operating in its name has now driven a large wedge into that seam of dissension. Full of rage, bitterness and grief following the train bombings, Spanish voters unceremoniously drove the ruling Popular Party from power. They blame the bombings on the party's decision to support the invasion of Iraq.

The Spanish Socialists will now govern; they campaigned against the Iraq war and against Spain's close alliance with the United States and Britain rather than France and Germany. New Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has promised to withdraw the 1,300 Spanish troops from Iraq by June 30 unless a U.N.-led force takes over there, which is unlikely, especially now. Who would want to enlist in an unnecessary war that is likely to make your country a target for terrorism?

Zapatero is trying hard to draw a distinction between the war on terror -- which Spain now has new and powerful reasons to prosecute -- and the war in Iraq. Inevitably, however, Spain's will to wage that fight against terror will be lessened. Moreover, Zapatero's election will be seen in some parts of the world as a defeat in the antiterror effort, and a powerful lesson: The Spaniards got hit hard, and they folded. If the fight is taken to Britain, where opposition to the Iraq war also is strong, perhaps the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair also could collapse. Italy, Poland and Romania should be concerned that their closeness to U.S. policy on Iraq might also put them on a short list of targets. Of equal concern is the apparent absence of any intelligence from any source hinting that this precision operation was being mounted in the heart of a large European city.

Thus does the U.S.-led war on terror teeter in the wind. Thus has the war in Iraq demonstrably not made the world safer. The symmetry is chilling: On 9/11, four planes; on 3/11, four trains. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with either. Can the world now get serious, very serious, about the need to focus on the real threat? Perhaps not, given the damage inflicted in Madrid and the fears it will generate. But the world should get serious, for the threat remains potent.

© Copyright 2004 Star Tribune

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