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June 08, 2006Zarqawi's DeathWonderful news for the Iraq war effort. I agree with John Burns that his death appears "to mark a major watershed in the war." But that is different, of course, than winning the war--which remains a hugely elusive goal given our seeming reliance on too hastily trained Iraqi forces, the mushrooming of sectarian militias, and our still unconvincing force posture in country, among many other factors. Still, today is a major positive development, one that will likely open up further opportunities to continue to moderate Sunni behavior (in conjunction with prisoner releases and other such 'national reconciliation' efforts). This said, the Sunni insurgency will still very much present real perils to our forces, and we will have to continue to grapple, of course, with irregular Shi'a (and Kurdish) forces in the days and months ahead who will cause varied trouble in terms of ensuring centralized, national authority. Let us now see also, with Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki 's belated appointment of his key security ministers, if the US and Iraq can swiftly build on the momentum afforded by Zarqawi's death to work to finally effectuate a convincing plan to assert order and control over Baghdad (not to mention Basra, Ramadi, and other cities). Regardless, and amidst all the gloom, we should be grateful for the hope afforded by the death of this grotesque, fanatical thug--and Maliki's so difficult moves to firm up his government better. A day of major good news from Iraq, in contrast to so many difficult ones these past months and years, for which we should be grateful. Posted by Gregory at June 8, 2006 12:53 PM | TrackBack (0)Comments
I'm glad to see him go. He's gonna hate sitting at the Judgment Bar of God in the afterlife. But I'm not going to get excited at all about the situation in Iraq. People got excited when Saddam was captured, but how has the situation been since then? Or how about his sons? the US Military calls Zarqawi the "mastermind", but in a country where the insurgency is mostly local, and most of the violence is sectarian, I don't see a big change coming anytime soon. Posted by: Daniel at June 8, 2006 02:59 PM | Permalink to this comment
I'm glad to see him go. He's gonna hate sitting at the Judgment Bar of God in the afterlife. But I'm not going to get excited at all about the situation in Iraq. People got excited when Saddam was captured, but how has the situation been since then? Or how about his sons? the US Military calls Zarqawi the "mastermind", but in a country where the insurgency is mostly local, and most of the violence is sectarian, I don't see a big change coming anytime soon. Posted by: Daniel at June 8, 2006 03:00 PM | Permalink to this comment
No matter what, the world and Iraq are better off without him. Whether it marks a "watershed" or, forgive me, "turning point" remains to be seen. Still, it has to be a net positive. And there is a flicker of hope for some positive momentum for a change. Fingers crossed. Posted by: Eric Martin at June 8, 2006 03:46 PM | Permalink to this comment
The reports I read say that Zarqawi's location was given away by some of his colleagues, acting as informants. Maybe the Bizarro World quality of the last five years has distorted my thinking, but I wonder if Zarqawi's death represents nothing more than an internal squabble among a particular clique of insurgents, some of whom cleverly enlisted the Americans to do their dirty work. Am I being paranoid, or shrewd? I can never tell any more.... Oh, and Bill Frist said this will be a "watershed". He must've seen a speck of credibility in the mirror while he was shaving, and knew he had to get rid of it right away. Posted by: sglover at June 8, 2006 03:58 PM | Permalink to this comment
I agree -- this is great news. Maliki's government could not have asked for better news. This gives it legitimacy.
I, too, am glad to see him go. But I'm not sure why his death marks a major watershed in the war. In the press accounts of the war, perhaps, since Zarqawi was the one insurgent known to Western media. But it's not at all clear to me that his importance in the fighting was commensurate to his stature in Western accounts of the fighting. I'd like to think that his death will make a significant difference, but nothing I've read about the nature of the conflict suggests that one individual's efforts could be so significant. Posted by: Tyrone Slothrop at June 8, 2006 04:29 PM | Permalink to this comment
After the hundreds of billions of dollars and the hundred of thousands of lives and this is the best news? The United States is truly a paper tiger, or at least a cardboard tiger.
I'm glad the guy's gone, but I'm guessing this won't make any difference in the course of Iraq's budding civil war. Posted by: guy at June 8, 2006 06:11 PM | Permalink to this comment
You have been linked at Obsidian Wings. (My apologies for the intrusion; the trackback function did not seem to be working.) Posted by: von at June 8, 2006 06:38 PM | Permalink to this comment
i really don't get how this suddenly changes anything - what's fundementally different? what pieces have fallen from the sky along with those JDAMs that will make this puzzle work? Nothing's changed. For sure this guy's whereabouts were given up by someone 'inside' who wanted to get rid of him and not for the same reasons most sane people might have wanted to get rid of him - his death means nothing if you're of the opinion Iraq can be saved acccording to some western model of stability. No addition by subtraction here - Iraq has moved way beyond linear equations so why's everyone madly scribling dead Zarqawi=good times? The freak could have choked to death on an olive pit 3 years ago and Iraq would still look more or less the same. Sure he blew up some mosques and that stirred the pot - but he didn't invent the pot, he didn't create the fumes now being expressed - he didn't make the chaos he merely exploited it, and now he himself has been 'exploited' - with extreme prejudice as they say. And what about where he was splattered - what was he doing there? Ask yourself that and then get a grip. Posted by: saintsimon at June 8, 2006 06:53 PM | Permalink to this comment
One thing this might change is the tenor of Sunni/Shi'ite relations - Zarqawi really, really hated Shi'ites, to a much greater degree than normal even for al Qaeda. With him gone, there's at least room for the conflict to evolve into something less ugly than it has been. Posted by: Tom Scudder at June 8, 2006 07:28 PM | Permalink to this comment
at worst this is good news. Posted by: liberalhawk at June 8, 2006 07:41 PM | Permalink to this comment
Christopher Allbritton has an optimist's take that is persuasive at first blush. I'm hoping he's right. Posted by: Jim Henley at June 8, 2006 07:48 PM | Permalink to this comment
I'm encouraged that al-q. has also acknowleged his death. That is great because I remember killing or capturing "chemical ali" at least 4 times....so I think we really got al z. It cant be too bad. ....But their should really be a limit to how many "watershed" events one war can have(the statue, Sadam, his sons, chemical ali..the nukes not, the election...the government) only to have thing get more deadly and chaotic in the next weeks. Posted by: centrist at June 8, 2006 07:54 PM | Permalink to this comment
The death of any savage killer, especially this one, is a good thing. It's impossible to predict what this will mean for Iraq, but hopefully this, along with the formation of a new government, will give the Shi 'ites and Sunnis some additional breathing room to learn how to coexist. I'm sure the sectarian violence will continue, but perhaps there will be less drive behind it without Zarqawi in the picture. Cautious optimism and pragmatism is probably the appropriate response here. Now, if we could just get that nasty OBL character.... Posted by: JP at June 8, 2006 09:02 PM | Permalink to this comment
Now that he's dead and his body has been identified, will we finally learn how many legs he had? IIRC, after the murder of Daniel Pearl, there was some debate as to whether the murderer could or could not have been Zarqawi. FWIW, the BBC seem convinced that whatever Zarqawi was, a "mastermind" was not among them. Posted by: Dave Weeden at June 8, 2006 10:07 PM | Permalink to this comment
seriously....screw you greg. The US government has just announced that it is not going to interfere in any way with the systematic murder of homosexuals in Iraq. ..... and you are celebrating Zarqawi's death? Fuck You. You've lost your soul. Posted by: plukasiak at June 9, 2006 01:20 AM | Permalink to this comment
P lukasiak, how would the US go about interfering with murder of homosexuals in iraq? Would we set up refugee camps for homosexuals and guard them? Let them move to the USA? Short of those, what could we do that would be effective? We have to promote democracy with the voters we have, not the voters we wish we had.
As they used to say on "Wayne's World": .....OK I'd be interested to find out what was in the documents found with Zarqawi, which one US general described as a "treasure trove." I've heard that phrase used before about material that didn't amount to much, but there are a lot of possibilities about an organization like this one. A combination of events has dropped several items of very good news in the new Iraqi government's lap; what a good thing it would be if some momentum could be sustained. Posted by: Zathras at June 9, 2006 05:03 AM | Permalink to this comment
Zathras -- from what I recollect, it wasn't documents found with Zaraqawi, but in raids in Baghdad yesterday. Anyway, I remember that last February the US found Z's laptop and it gave them a fair amount of information, enough to calm down Iraq for 2-3 months. This could yield similar information. Maliki must also move against the corruption. In many relatively peaceful Iraqi towns, I suspect that that is the number one issue, Posted by: erg at June 9, 2006 06:59 AM | Permalink to this comment
Zathras, it makes sense if they announce it and call it a treasure trove, it isn't. If they have a lot of useful info they'll want to use it. But if they announce that they got a lot then the secret group pauses. People delay checking in because they might be compromised and lead to their contacts, or vice versa. Delaying them is worth something, when you don't have anything else.
Another of Greg's periodic descents into Pollyanna-ish, maudlin stupidity.
On one hand, in the ongoing war against Al Qaeda, score one for the good guys. Now that Zarqawi is down, maybe they can take the lessons from this and apply them to, say, Zawahiri and Bin Laden. It would really be nice to make Al Qaeda's leadership feel like Hamas's. On the other, in the ongoing war to stablize Iraq, Zarqawi was more Emmanuel Goldstein than General Giap. The US military even admitted as much. In the grand scheme of things, we might've forced the insurgency to duck and cover for a month or two, but this doesn't seem to be as anything more than a symbolic victory at that. Posted by: Doug H. at June 9, 2006 08:32 AM | Permalink to this comment
The best comment on this was made a while ago, by the War Nerd:
Anybody read the War Nerd's column? More sense in that then in the entire establishment media/pundit pools combined. Here's one on 'Mr. Big', in general: http://www.exile.ru/2005-June-03/war_nerd.html Posted by: Barry at June 9, 2006 02:36 PM | Permalink to this comment
Sorreee! The 'internal server error' message struck again. Posted by: Barry at June 9, 2006 02:39 PM | Permalink to this comment
regardless of how one chooses to view the end of Zarqawi - to me it's a meaningless victory that seems to have disturbingly activated in the blogsphere and MSM a singular American trait: blind optimism - but regardless of that could someone please explain why if they had this guy essentially cornered for a couple of weeks and were sure he was at that isolated house at that particular time, why drop bombs on him? Why not send in a team of special forces backed up by a company of whatever and attempt to capture him? At least one woman and a child were killed in this bombing - sure many women and children have been killed by HVT bombings - but in this situation it seems the overkill was unnecessary, the guy was cornered - so why the overkill? Posted by: oldgoat at June 9, 2006 02:41 PM | Permalink to this comment
Hilarious stuff here Good mix of "it won't change anything" with "what about OBL!" As if these two sentiment weren't completely contradictory - is there something in the DU kool-aid that prevents you from understanding this very simple truth?
Good Lord - can we ever be right to some of you moonbats Posted by: Pogue Mahone at June 9, 2006 04:09 PM | Permalink to this comment
Two things: Also, isn't it kind of funny that the administration that goes to such great lengths to protect the secrecy of it's dealings would put so much stress on the fact that someone within Zarqawi's organization dropped a dime on him? Or is the administration looking to get out of paying the $25 million promised for info leading to Zarqawi? Posted by: AF at June 9, 2006 04:20 PM | Permalink to this comment
"But we did know that he was in that house and there were people on the ground nearby. Couldn't we have captured him and brought him to stand before a court of law?" And taken the chance on him getting away again. Or fighting it out, resulting in everyone in the house getting killed anyway, along with some US or Iraqi troops. Id have made the same call Centcom did. Look, he wanted a trial, hes had plenty of chances to turn himself in.
That one of Zaraqwi's own became our informant is the best news of those whole operation. Let's hope more follow. Posted by: Lynn at June 9, 2006 06:59 PM | Permalink to this comment
That one of Zaraqwi's own became our informant is the best news of those whole operation. Let's hope more follow. I don't see that at all. It could just as easily mean that at least some of the guerilla groups have found a way to enlist the biggest, baddest gang in the region, the American military, into their own factional quarrels. Maybe you're right, but at this time I think the only thing we can say with any certainty is that almost nothing is as it seems, in Iraq. Id have made the same call Centcom did. Oh, now the generals can sleep easy -- liberalhawk approves! All those years at West Point finally paid off! Posted by: sglover at June 9, 2006 08:27 PM | Permalink to this comment
Lynn, Jeez, you would believe anything...grow up. Posted by: ND at June 9, 2006 08:31 PM | Permalink to this comment
"Nice post from the GoatF)**&&%er - moaning about the innocents killed as they served cous cous to honored guest Zarky it's a very simple point so try and follow Pogue: was this guy not worth capturing? The most wanted guy in Iraq, seems like maybe you'd want to capture him, might have some intersting things to say. They had him surrounded, he was isolated, he wasn't on the move, the situation was pefect for a special forces op - so why not? Doesn't make sense. Might wanna pull your head out of the right wing dung heap long enough to wonder why. But ok, let's assume improbably that there was a good reason not to go for a capture, the next completely valid question to ask is was dropping a couple of bombs on the house the best option? They had the place surrounded, he wasn't going anywhere and they must have known there was at least one child in the house, possibly more - so was the bombing the only option or just tactical laziness or worse indifference? Sure as shit those who sympathise in part or in whole with the late Zarky have the answer to that question. But still regardless of all that it's still completely relevant and not merely left wing whinging to bring up the fact that HVT bombings in this war have been a miserable failure that have left possibly thousands of civilians dead while until yesterday entirely missing the HVT the bombs were unleashed for - which almost apparently happened in this case going by today's headlines! so how do these questions amount to left wing moaning? Posted by: oldgoat at June 9, 2006 08:33 PM | Permalink to this comment
Without knowledge of the time they knew Zarq was there, and how long they could reasonably expect him to remain there, and how long it would take ground forces to get there, and other relevant tactical considerations, isnt it absurd for us to sit here and second guess Centcom? As for who gave him away and why (assuming there was someone OTHER than the messenger the Jordanians caught who pointed out Sheik Rahman, IE that there was somone inside who ratted out this particular location) we here dont know who that was, how long theyve been working with coalition intell, or why. The assumption that it was someone using the coalition to kill Zarqi for AQ purposes strikes me as mistaken, given how effective Zarqi was at making Iraq ungovernable. Posted by: liberalhawk at June 9, 2006 10:00 PM | Permalink to this comment
Let's take a look at Zarqawi. http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001467.php Posted by: rapier at June 10, 2006 01:13 AM | Permalink to this comment
> given how effective Zarqi was at making Iraq ungovernable. I don't understand what you mean here. Isn't it widely believed that "Zarqi" was a right-wing Salafi/Wahabbi? Isn't Baghdad falling apart due to Interior/army/police hit squads leaving bodies in the streets every night? Why should we think these are related to any nutcase Wahabbi?
That one of Zaraqwi's own became our informant is the best news of those whole operation. Let's hope more follow. The more I think of it, the more I realize I missed a possibly better analogy: Zarqawi, meet Dutch Schultz. Who's the Lucky Luciano in this scenario? Posted by: Doug H. at June 10, 2006 03:31 AM | Permalink to this comment
Nobody knows what the long term effect of Zarqawi's death will be. He was definitely an evil person. There is an argument that he was handed over on orders from outside, i.e. UBN & AAZ - see StrategyPage.com which posted a statement that Zarqawi was out of favor before his killing was announced. It's hard to see the continuing presence of American and coalition troops, driving like maniacs, shooting first and asking questions later, as having any good effect on the situation inside Iraq. The sooner that they are removed the better. Why does Cong Murtha have more sense than Senators Biden, Clinton & Kerry rolled up into one? Because he has no minders, like the old Dean. Posted by: anciano at June 10, 2006 07:46 PM | Permalink to this comment
I comes as no surprise that so many people abominate success. Face it: this was an exemplary op. The Special Services painted the correct target and the bombs took it out, nice and clean. Best of all, the brass thought to have the Iraqi cops and some American infantry right there on the scene, so that they could invest the place and seize the cadaver. There will be no Kaaba dedicated to Zarqawi, with pilgrims marching around widdershins, beating their breasts and lashing themselves as they chant their defiant dirges. He is reduced to a handful of dust, and his followers are crestfallen.
Zarqawi's death is quite likely to cause major operational problems for Al-Queda in Iraq. It's a good thing. I think it's a good thing that someone is asking "why did we bomb him" instead of raiding, but I also think it was clearly worth it, in this case. You can't win an insurgency with aerial-boming-first strategies, but Zarqawi is in a different category. He's a leader, and killing the leaders is a good idea, generally.
There is a flicker of positive momentum here, with the well-timed appointment of the DefSec and Interior ministry - another very good move by Khalizad, our ambassador - but it could easily end up being just a blip in the sandstorm. This rests on Maliki. If he is clever and strong enough to thwart people like SCIRI and Al-Sadr, he has a chance. The prisoner release was also a smart move. We just killed off the worst of the anti-shiites, now we have to wean off the best of them. We'll see how that goes. The strongest player in this game is the decentralized ethnic hatred and violence. I am not yet ready to change even from a "sell" to a "hold" on Iraq. Posted by: glasnost at June 11, 2006 07:38 PM | Permalink to this comment
carentan44, That's the Shias, who engage in that sort of mourning...you know…the Islamic Revolutionary Guard and Iranian trained Islamists Americans sacrificed so much to put into power. The Sunnis engage in different styles of mourning.
Zarqawi in at least two very public pronouncements called for the killing of Shiites. period. Not some or certain ones, but any and all evidently. As strange and almost incomprehesible to me as to how this advanced his or Al Queda's or anyones cause in Iraq ,or beyond for that matter, is the fact that I've never heard it mentioned by any commentator. Even Juan Cole never discussed it and I've written him asking that he would. Such pronouncements would seem to me to be a PR blunder of stupendous size, ripe for exploitation by almost everyone. Instead there was silence. I'm glad he's gone but take little joy in high tech assasination. I'd much prefer he and Osama were taken alive. Demistified and denied mayrterdom. His demise no matter how it was accomplisheyd, either the result of elaborate plots or the most fortuitous luck finding him, has no downside. Posted by: rapier at June 12, 2006 03:08 AM | Permalink to this comment
The latest putrescent meme to well up form the sewers of the Kos, DU and Indymedia is the Shia death squad talking point. After a couple of years in which the "minutemen" of the Insurgency have engaged in an indscriminate campaign or slaughter, assassination and terror which has killed Iraqi's - mostly Shia, in their tens of thousands, and this campaign itself follow decades where the murderers performed their tasks with the sanction of the Baathist state - we are now hearing the selective outrage form the usual suspects about Shia death squads. These undoubtedly exist, but they have appeared very late in the game, their activities as yet are very slight and pale into insignificance when compared to the long and vast bloody record of those they are fighting against. Overall, given the level of provocation, the Shia have displayed remarkable forbearance despite endless atrocities commited against them. Even now their overall posture remains conciliatary - and if there are some freelancers who are being winked at for extra judicial killing of suspected insurgents - the insurgent sympathisers can hardly complain of disproportionate force. The insurgency has displayed the sort of brutality last seen in Algeria - and as brutal as the successful effort to supress that insurgency was - few Algerians today would think that the effort was not justified by the nature of the enemy. Yes the Shia death squads need to be reigned in- but even today the majority of the killing is being done by Sunni's and of Shia. The recent spate of Chek point killings in Diyala as well as beheadings were the work of sunni death squads. It strikes me as astonishing that so many people have been prepared to buy into this meme, when it is part of that pathology of Sunni supremacism mixed in with that close ally of all supremacist movements - obsessive and utterly solipsistic victimology. Astonishing because even given much of the media's antipathy for the project in Iraq they have been unable to hide the fact of Insurgent atrocity directed against Shia targets on a daily basis. Posted by: Johan W at June 12, 2006 07:03 AM | Permalink to this comment
> The latest putrescent meme to well up form the sewers of the Kos, DU and Indymedia is the Shia death squad talking point. Are we supposed to understand from this that you consider anyone mentioning Shia death squads as being disgusting -- that you find it vial and revolting for anyone to notice them, or consider them immoral? That seems odd -- in the rather amoral sense -- (that you condone death squads but condemn speaking against them), so I wonder if I've completely misunderstood this.
By the way, Juan Cole, who is usually rather tediously preachy, actually said something funny recently -- or rather, quoted someone else saying something funny -- namely that there is no need for the US to invade Iran, because after invading Afghanistan and establishing an Islamic republic, and then invading Iraq and establishing an Islamic republic, there is no need to invade Iran because it already has an Islamic republic. Posted by: tommy at June 12, 2006 08:12 AM | Permalink to this comment
tommy - No I am not saying that anyone mentioning Shia death squads is disgusting - what I am saying is that people who were in the habit of hialing Sunni arab death squads and mass murderers as anti-imperial minutmen, and who now feign outrage over rumours that some Iraqi security forces might be crossing the line into extra judicial killing are disgusting. If California experienced an upsurge in Gang violence that was indiscriminatley killing 1000 californians a month and had killed 2,000 or more police it would not take three years before vigilantes and police death squads would be conducting payback that would be largely winked at by the population under assault. The Shia have shown enormous forbearance uner extreme provocation, the existence of the death squads is adduced from sources that should be examined a little more closely - in particular the Muslim Scholars Association - whose compalints about Shia death squads sound pretty hypocritical given that associations public support and fucntion as cheif apologists for the Sunni insurgency. The more distant apologists for the Sunni insurgency have simply no business faigning outrage over Shia or Kurdish death squads. These do need to be reigned in but I am understanding of their motivation. Talking about the Shia death squads without reference to anti-shia violence strikes me as tendentious as well as morally smelly. Making it sound as if they are the primary source of violence in Iraq, and simply failing to mention that to this day most deaths and atrocity is committed by the Insurgents is worse than smelly - it strikes me as a wholesale acceptance of the murderous antishia bogotry espoused by the likes of Zarqawi. Juan Cole is well known for his proclivities as a Pan Arabist and Sunni Supremacist apologist. He is a key proponent of the related meme that the US intervention has resulted in nascent theocratic states in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is simply absurd in the case of Afghanistan, and in the case of Iraq where the dominant polictiacl group is a 4 part coalition between Kurds, devout but quietist Shia who revere Sistani, the Shish-Kebabs (Secular and urban Shia and Sunni who come from mixed neighbourhoods and often mixed families and are the core of the upper middle class and professionals - Alawi, Chalabi etc) and small rump of militant Shia. The tribal and ex-baathist Sunni are being negotiated with, but any compromise is not going to result in a theocracy - thsi for the simple reason that although there are theo cratically inclined Shia as well as Theocratically inclined Sunni their theocratic visions are anathema to each other. Neither of them can command majorities even within their own communities. Civil war is a far greater threat than theocracy at this time and the charge of theocracy being leveled at Iraq says much more about the sort of polemic that some people are prepared to stoop to than about the situation on the ground in Iraq. Posted by: Johan W at June 12, 2006 09:59 AM | Permalink to this comment
I assume you are disgusted by some people condemning some death squads primarily because those death squads in particular are inconconvenient to your politics, and not because you are actually in favor of death squads, then? I can appreciate this type of realpolitik, as BushJr engages in it routinely (condemning torture by groups he dislikes, but condoning torture by groups he likes -- not as moral statements, but as simple realpolitik -- the use of any means to achieve desired ends -- BushJr did not invent this, it is longstanding policy in the US, and, frankly, most other nations). I assume your mode of expressing disgust and calling people vile is a way to express your frustration, presumably because the people who disgust you do not espouse your views -- and you don't really want to kill them, you are merely frustrated that they don't see your reasons? Posted by: tommy at June 12, 2006 04:14 PM | Permalink to this comment
Johan W wrote: Juan Cole is well known for his proclivities as a Pan Arabist and Sunni Supremacist apologist. ----------------------------------- Oh my God, and all this time, considering Cole's academic carreer, I've been accusing him of being a Pan-Persian Shia-Apologist...thanks for seting me straight! Posted by: NeoDude at June 12, 2006 04:52 PM | Permalink to this comment
Glad Zarqawi's dead. And it won't make a bit of difference in the violence. It's too late to unscrew this pooch. When we decide to put in enough troops to do the job, let me know.
tommy: What is the point in replying to you ? You obviously hear what you want to hear and ignore what is actually said. Anyone is free to read what I actually posted, and what you have assumed I meant by it and draw their own conclusions. Posted by: Johan W at June 12, 2006 08:09 PM | Permalink to this comment
Why not try to take him alive? To what end? The only reason to take such people alive is to get the information they have. And if you can't do that, such prisoners are liabilities. Just look at all the hand-wringing about the poor Gitmo inmates. And since the definition of torture has been modified to include anything that you're not allowed to do to an unruly child, there is effectively no way to coerce anyone you take alive to give you any information. What did you think would happen? There is now a very great incentive to make sure that members of the "resistance" are NOT taken alive. Posted by: tcobb at June 13, 2006 03:02 AM | Permalink to this comment
Why is it that you feel compelled to follow what you yourself call "wonderful news," with the all too familiar "but" which inevitably either introduces some patently obvious caveat about grim tasks remaining, or repeats (lest we forget!) the litany of failures that everyone must surely know by heart at this late date? I should think by now you'd even bore yourself with this knee-jerk formulaic approach to any contemplation of Iraq. Posted by: JM Hanes at June 13, 2006 08:38 AM | Permalink to this comment
JM Hanes, the obvious reason to remind people about the general failure even while reporting this wonderful PR stunt is that it's still a general failure. Zarqawi had essentially no influence in iraq except as a horrible example that nobody liked. He had essentially no influence in al qaeda, either. In terms of world terrorism, nobody had ever heard of him before he got active in iraq -- we created him as a media figure. So of course it's very good news that we have uncreated him as a media figure. And of course everybody's happy that he's dead. But in terms of our predicament, where we have no good options in iraq, and no good options for dealing with the nuisance of international terrorism, and no good options for nuclear nonproliferation, killing this guy doesn't help at all.
tcobb, So you sexually molest children when they are unruly? Posted by: ND at June 13, 2006 04:24 PM | Permalink to this comment
Snr Goat responded to my comment below: "Nice post from the GoatF)**&&%er - moaning about the innocents killed as they served cous cous to honored guest Zarky it's a very simple point so try and follow Pogue: was this guy not worth capturing? The most wanted guy in Iraq, seems like maybe you'd want to capture him, might have some intersting things to say. They had him surrounded, he was isolated, he wasn't on the move, the situation was pefect for a special forces op - so why not? Doesn't make sense. Might wanna pull your head out of the right wing dung heap long enough to wonder why.
But ok, let's assume improbably that there was a good reason not to go for a capture, the next completely valid question to ask is was dropping a couple of bombs on the house the best option? They had the place surrounded, he wasn't going anywhere and they must have known there was at least one child in the house, possibly more - so was the bombing the only option or just tactical laziness or worse indifference? Sure as shit those who sympathise in part or in whole with the late Zarky have the answer to that question.
so how do these questions amount to left wing moaning?
Tell it to the troops - volunteer em for more house to house searches with nerf-bats to ensure no innocent life is ever lost ( except more imperialist american soldiers of course ) Yes - THEY could have charged in ala SWAT to "take em down" - not YOU - but THEY chose another option and not a single US soldier died in the operation Best result of all wasn't it Posted by: Pogue Mahone at June 13, 2006 05:58 PM | Permalink to this comment
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About Belgravia Dispatch
Gregory Djerejian, an international lawyer and business executive, comments intermittently on global politics, finance & diplomacy at this site. The views expressed herein are solely his own and do not represent those of any organization. More About the Author Email the Author Recent Entries
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