Faced with mass murder, the Spanish electorate voted to give the jihadis what they were demanding: withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq. March 11 was a reprise of September 11. But this time it worked. Instead of rising up in anger against the mass murderers of the new fascist movement in the Islamic world, as the United States did, Spain did the reverse: it gave in. In the hope of avoiding future violence, the victorious Spanish Socialist party reiterated its decision to abandon Iraq to chaos and Islamist revolution.

It is rare for terrorists to score such a clear-cut triumph. Usually, even craven democratic governments talk the talk of confronting terror, while quietly scurrying in the opposite direction. But this time Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the incoming Spanish prime minister, was almost emphatic in his eagerness to accede to the terrorists’ demands.

Do I exaggerate? In December, CNN found documents on internet message boards that laid out Al-Qaeda’s intermediate goals in the war against the West. “We think the Spanish government will not stand more than two blows, or three at the most,” one document said, “before it will be forced to withdraw because of public pressure. If its forces remain after these blows, the victory of the Socialist party will be almost guaranteed — and the withdrawal of Spanish forces will be on its campaign manifesto.”

How modest in retrospect their ambitions were. They did not need more than one blow. They did not just get the inclusion of troop withdrawal in the Socialist manifesto — they got the Socialists elected. Last week, days after the triumph in Spain, another group related to Al-Qaeda rejoiced in the success of its strategy: “Because of this (electoral) decision, the leadership has decided to stop all operations within the Spanish territories . . . until we know the intentions of the new government that has promised to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq. And we repeat this to all the brigades present in European lands: stop all operations.”

It’s simple really. Bomb and murder your way to your political goals and reward the governments you have intimidated — while making sure they realise that the option of renewing violence is always available. Zapatero knows that if he does not remove troops from Iraq, Spain will be targeted again. There is an obvious description for what has just taken place: caving in to blackmail.

The risk to all of Europe has been ratcheted up exponentially. If I lived in Rome or London or Warsaw right now, I would be very afraid because of what has just happened in Madrid.

The possibility of capturing an important Al-Qaeda figure in Pakistan in the battle that has been taking place over several days does not change this equation. Al-Qaeda and its multiple offshoots are decentralised, often autonomous and able to act without central command. They have learnt an important thing from Madrid: if it worked once, why not try it again? Tony Blair is a far more tempting target than Jose Maria Aznar. A truly spectacular attack on London, using biological or chemical weapons to cow the British electorate, might surely be worth trying to topple him.

The jihadis have learnt another couple of lessons. The first is that America will not quail before a terror attack.

Osama Bin Laden misjudged that one on September 11, foolishly believing that he could shell-shock the American public into isolationism. Wrong. The opposite happened. It was a huge miscalculation on Al-Qaeda’s part which led to the destruction of its client state, Afghanistan, the removal of a de facto anti-American ally, Saddam Hussein, and — even worse from its point of view — the possibility of constitutional democracies in two Islamic lands, Afghanistan and Iraq. The Anglo-American counter- attack also took Libya out of the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) equation and sent reverberations of democratic unrest into Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Now, however, the jihadis know something else: that the September 11 gambit can work in Europe. Attacking Spain first and wrecking the anti-terror alliance of new Europe was a master stroke. And it has the added effect of demoralising the others. Last week the Polish prime minister spoke for the first time of his uncertainty about retaining forces in Iraq next year. Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, and Blair are obviously next on the list.

That is why the astonishing disavowal of any force in response to terrorism by Romano Prodi was so devastating. “It is clear,” the European commission president opined after the Madrid horror, “that using force is not the answer to resolving the conflict with terrorists.” The sentiment is sickeningly defeatist in itself but the timing was a de facto announcement of surrender. No wonder that a day later another Islamist group threatened France with mass murder if the government did not relent in its ban on headscarves. What is the cost of violence, after all, if your enemy has announced in advance that he will never retaliate? A classic statement of appeasement appeared the day after the Madrid massacre in The Guardian. Its moral vacuity and strategic stupidity sum up much that is wrong with the defeatism sweeping Europe. “Are those who perpetrated the commuter train bombings to be hunted down and smoked out of their lairs, and if they were, are we confident that we would prevent the next attack, and the one after that?” the newspaper asked.

Notice the sneering contempt with which the Guardian leader writers refer to George W Bush’s attempt to hunt down and destroy the terrorists and their allies who have declared war on the West. Notice, too, the implication: that the perpetrators of these atrocities somehow should not be “hunted down and smoked out of their lairs”. The implication is that any attempt to defeat terrorism merely fosters more terrorism and so . . . so what exactly? What is The Guardian’s solution to the thousands murdered in New York and the hundreds who died in Bali and Madrid? What is its solution to the terrifying possibility that such terrorists might also be able to amplify their mass murder by deploying new technologies of destruction that would make September 11 seem like a side-show? Here is its solution: “The victims of the commuter train bombings in Madrid, and the Spaniards who came out of the streets last night, surely deserve more than party political responses. Europe too needs to mould a different response to its September 11.

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