Judging by some of the comments from the hawk crowd, the victory in Spain of the anti-Iraq war party is ipso facto a victory for Al Qaeda.

The hawks continue to conflate Iraq and Al Qaeda, mistaking Spaniards’ reasonable desire to do what little they can to remove themselves from the line of fire with weakness in the face of terrorism.

It may be true that there can be no appeasing Al Qaeda — if that’s who in fact was behind the March 11 attacks in Madrid — but the Spaniards seem to have made the eminently sensible decision that there was no point in continuing to participate in a war that brought no tangible benefits in the war on terror — since, you know, it was a diversion from it! — but may have exacted a terrible, terrible price.

But you know what? Screw those Spics. Now the Russkies know how to run things. Their guy, another Friend of Dubya, got re-elected with no trouble at all. Why can’t they all be like Putin? Or better yet, like Bush Buddy Pervez Musharraf, the wonderful Pakistani dictator friendly with Islamic extremists whose top nuclear scientist sold secrets to half the globe.

Anyway, Putin came into office on the strength of his tough-on-terror reputation. And, naturally, he was re-elected by a suspiciously overwhelming margin because the Chechen terror threat has been completely vanquished.

Right?

What’s worse? Re-electing someone in spite of the fact that their policies have not done one damn bit of good in actually stopping terrorist attacks, or deciding instead to choose an alternate route?

I’ll take the Spics’ so-called appeasement anyday.

UPDATE: The first and last word on this should really be Julian Sanchez’s fine essay at Reason Online.