When the Spaniards threw out their conservative government after the March 2004 bombings in Madrid and replaced it with a left-of-center one that was promising, among other things, to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq, they were roundly denounced by U.S. hawks as “appeasers” (for some American pundits it’s always Munich in 1938). Meanwhile, Matthew Yglesias reports that two years later the Spanish seem to be doing okay.

Surely the merits of a certain course of action are independent of whether it’ll be perceived as “appeasement.” Just because Osama bin Laden wants U.S. troops out of Saudi Arabia, or Iraq, or wants us to stop supporting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands doesn’t necessarily mean that those are all bad ideas. In fact, it seems to me that you shouldn’t let your avowed enemy dictate your course of action. Should the U.S.A. continue to bleed itself in the deserts of Iraq just to spite Osama bin Laden?