Postwar Election?

David Brooks is one of our favorite New York Times columnists, but he sure picked the wrong morning to fetch up with a column on "The Postwar Election." Wrote Mr. Brooks, who to his credit acknowledged "no armistice has been declared" — "when a public turns from a war mentality to a peace mentality, it turns with a vengeance."

Too bad someone forgot to mention to Al Qaeda that it was time to adopt a peace mentality. Maybe Osama bin Laden doesn't read Mr. Brook's column in his cave. In the event, hours after the column was issued, the world got a powerful reminder that the war is still on, in the form of two car-bomb attacks in Algiers that killed dozens, including several United National staffers. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility.

Some will no doubt claim that the bombing does not immediately affect American interests. But it's only a short hop across the Mediterranean for North African terrorists to America's NATO allies in Europe, where they can blend in with large North African immigrant populations. Declaring this a postwar election and adopting a "peace mentality" now would be the equivalent of doing so in World War II with Hitler still at large and the Nazis still holding the capability to bomb London.

We don't mean to suggest for a moment that any justification exists for ignoring the issues in the campaign other than the war. But it is folly to suggest that this war is over or anyone's mission has been accomplished. The war can be ignored only at the candidates' peril. It has a way of inserting itself into places like an unwanted guest, as yesterday's casualties at Algiers remind us.