Unsurprisingly the US has warned of potential Al-Qaeda attacks to disrupt the upcoming US Presidential elections. The warning is necessarily vague and is to be expected. However for al-Qaeda there is a big problem: any such attack (and God willing it will never happen and this is all hypothetical) is unlikely to have much influence on the result of the US election.

Why? The reason is simple: it appears that the US polity is particularly polarised at the moment. The gulf between the left and right is wide and growing; there is no interest in the centre, whatever that is. Such a terror attack will merely re-enforce the views of both sides of politics. For the left it will be another demonstration that Bush has brough this upon Americans by waging the war in Iraq and being antagonistic. The right will see it as further proof of the justification of this war and the need to carry on the battle until it is won. Whereas once such an event would see the nation rally to the flag and President, now half the country will see the flag and the President as the very cause and problem. This would not be a Spain. I fear such thought does not pervade the minds of al-Qaeda, where the PR coup of such a hit would outweigh rational analysis of the longer term consequences.

But the enemy in this war is not a rational one.

UPDATE: The Belgravia Dispatch and Dan Drezner also have some thoughts.