Some timely spine-stiffening from the American analyst Victor Davis Hanson in the wake of the Spanish disaster. He first correctly sums up the significance of the electoral debacle:

'This is the most profound example of capitulation since Daladier and Chamberlain and sets a truly awful example: will British, Polish, Italian, and American elections now be presaged by mass murder on the assumption that decadent, affluent Westerners can be intimidated in fear of attacks? ... and I say this with real remorse given their suffering and national catastrophe-not since Theodosius and the late Romans paid their annual bribe money to Attila have we seen such success in bullying and terrifying a Western nation. It is right off the pages of Gibbon in his discussion of how weak, wealthy, and fearful Westerners paid Goths and Huns before Adrianople and Chalons. And this is the beginning not the end of it, as we shall soon see.'

As he suggests, the Spanish capitulation to terror puts the rest of us in far greater danger, with increased risks of atrocities timed to suborn our own electoral processes. Europe is now at greater risk than the US precisely because it is seen as a soft target that is queasy about defending itself. Hanson sets out, by contrast, the attitude and programme that offer the only prospect of defeating Islamist fascism:

'Libya is coming clean. Pakistan is helping hunt down OBL and revealing its nuclear roguery, a far cry from its pre-911 behavior. Iran is worried about a revolution and an unpredictable US. Soon no more troops in Saudi Arabia. Arafat is lord of his rubble heap, not in the Lincoln bedroom each month. So despite the tragic sacrifices of 600 American dead overseas, many hundreds wounded, billions spent, and perhaps a trillion committed to security and economic recovery from 9-11, America is doing pretty well and turning the corner.

'We must press on in Iraq. Continue the pressure on the Saudis to join in the war against al Qaeda and embrace reform--or end up on the wrong side of a very angry US. We will not win until terrorists feel that they cannot live in Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. Those countries must change and they have a choice between voluntary radical domestic reform (unlikely), revolution by a democratic opposition (preferable) or military confrontation with the United States (the turmoil in Afghanistan and Iraq will not last for ever).

'Victory will come when Americans accept that terror is but a method, not an enemy. We are at war with Islamic fascists who out of conventional military impotence employ terror, along with their autocratic patrons that either actively abet them or knowingly ignore them. We will win when such regimes either fall or at least choose the Khadafy option of compliance (we will see whether it is genuine). That goal of ending the pathological landscape that gave us 9-11 is accomplished by military action, promotion of local reformers, and a massive ideological campaign to explain Western civilization and its transcendent values- not only to Arabs but to our own citizens who so often, almost criminally so, take it for granted or have not a clue about what allows them to prosper as we do.

'All this can be done-but only if we learn from the past wages of appeasement, have confidence in our ability to defend our culture intellectually and spiritually, and never give into our fears.'

The last paragraph is of course the really crucial bit. The US currently passes that particular test -- Europe does not.