Word: madrid
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Terrorists reminded us last week in Madrid that the specter of al-Qaeda haunts the Western world today as much as it did on September 12, 2001 - if not more so. Even as Spain appears to have arrested those responsible, security analysts on both sides of the Atlantic are already focused on one question: Where next? Italy, France, Australia, Japan and others are tightening up security procedures; the New York City Police Department, mindful of the vulnerability of the city's mass transit system, has sent experts to Madrid to study the mechanics of the train bombings that killed more...
...When terror outrages from Madrid and Casablanca, through Istanbul and Baghdad, to Bali and Jakarta, are described as the work of "al-Qaeda," the name describes a broad franchise of terrorist jihad against the U.S. and its allies adopted by scores of local Islamist groups. Western intelligence agencies don't believe the men on the run in western Pakistan are actually pulling the trigger on attacks such as the Madrid bombings. Instead, bin Laden and his deputies set broad objectives in their "State of the Union" type addresses periodically released to Arab broadcast media, and those objectives can be pursued...
...Just as President Bush claims 9/11 "changed everything" in U.S. politics, so, too may the Madrid attacks mark a turning point in Europe's relationship to President Bush's war on terror. The continent's geographical proximity to the Arab world and its large - and mostly impoverished and marginalized - Arab immigrant populations make it especially vulnerable to terror attacks. Now that al-Qaeda and its supporters are directly attacking Europe's cities rather than simply using them as staging areas, European leaders are looking to ramp up their own efforts to fight terror. But as the Spanish election result shows...
...European Union security officials meet in Madrid on Friday to hammer out a strategy - a meeting in which the U.S. won't be participating. That's natural, of course, in that the U.S. is not part of the European Union. But it may also signal an intention by the Europeans to forge a more effective strategy for countering the al-Qaeda movement, and challenging the U.S. to rethink its own approach...
...Still, France and Germany aren't exactly crowing. The Madrid attack has reminded European leaders how much more vulnerable they are than the U.S. to terror attacks on their own soil for reasons of geography (the proximity of the Arab world), demography (large Arab immigrant populations) and the EU integration that has eliminated border crossings in much of the continent. At the urging of Germany, a special summit of EU foreign ministers meets later this week to coordinate responses and tighten security measures...