The latest casualty …
The latest casualty in the war in Iraq is a major one; the most wanted man in Iraq.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaida’s leader in Iraq who led a bloody campaign of suicide bombings and kidnappings, has been killed in an air strike, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday, adding that his identity was confirmed by fingerprints and a look at his face. It was a major victory in the U.S.-led war in Iraq and the broader war on terror.
It was rightly cheered by all present when it was announced.
Loud applause broke out among the reporters and soldiers as [Prime Minister Nouri] al-Maliki, flanked by U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and U.S. Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told a news conference that “al-Zarqawi was eliminated.”
This is an opportunity for Iraqi insurgents to re-evaluate their purpose and their means to that purpose.
Thamir Abdulhussein, a college student in Baghdad, said he hopes the killing of al-Zarqawi will promote reconciliation between Iraq’s fractured ethnic and sectarian groups.
“If it’s true al-Zarqawi was killed, that will be a big happiness for all the Iraqis,” he said. “He was behind all the killings of Sunni and Shiites. Iraqis should now move toward reconciliation. They should stop the violence.”
These may be the words of an idealistic college student, but the hope is there that such a thing could happen Depending on how much al-Zarqawi’s death becomes a blow to their morale, it could represent the perfect chance for this to happen.
On the other hand, it may not.
Amir Muhammed Ali, a 45-year-old stock broker in Baghdad, was skeptical that al-Zarqawi’s death would end the unrelenting violence in the country, saying he was a foreigner but the Iraqi resistance to U.S.-led forces would likely continue.
“He didn’t represent the resistance, someone will replace him and the operations will go on,” he said.
I’d guess that this outcome is more likely, but at least now the chances for decreased violence have been given a renewed possibility.
But the Left is still looking at the cloud instead of the silver lining, just as they did when Hussein was captured. Hesiod at the Daily Kos, in his diary about Zarqawi, starts out with promise…
Finally, some genuine good news from Iraq. Abu Musab al Zarqawi was killed in an air raid last [n]ight in Northern Baghdad.
We can all analyze what this means for the Iraq occupation later. But, right now, we should all be happy that a man who was responsible for the murders of hundreds, if not thousands of men women and children in Iraq — and for the demise and maiming of our troops — has been taken out.
…yet he soon degenerates into back-handed slaps.
No matter whether you support, or oppose the war. No matter whether you believe Bush is doing the right thing, or is a lying snake who got us into this war for the most cynical of reasons and then screwed it up — this is good news.
Yes, I know. Bush had a chance to take out Zarqawi BEFORE we ever invaded Iraq and “allowed him to escape” because he didn’t want to eliminate one of his principle excuses for the invasion.
But, still — this is good news!
And, yes, I know that the major problem in Iraq isn’t so much the insurgency anymore, as it’s the growing sectarian civil war that we are barely able to keep from exploding.
But, this is good news, right?
And, true…the Haditha killings are not exactly endearing us to the Iraqi population.
But…this is some good news!
So, tip your hats to Jordanian intelligence and our military forces. Everything is now hunky dory in Iraq, and we can all declare victory! And , more importantly, we can all expect our military forces to start coming home now because the war is over!
Right?
As the news story noted, Zarqawi was one of the essential elements in the sectarian violence, so this indeed does deal a blow to that situation. Hesiod can’t manage to report good news without “balancing” it with 3 or 4 problems, real or perceived. There are always problems in war, always setbacks, created by ourselves or the enemy. This is not new, but Hesiod has to bring this up to keep his opinion of the war in Iraq consistent in his own mind. When Hussein was captured, Hesiod was the most positive of all the tier-A lefty sites. He’s losing his objectivity.
The same goes for Steven Benen, guest blogging for Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly.
Iraqi and U.S. officials agreed that his death would not necessarily stem the violence and insurgency — and as if to prove the point, an explosion ripped through a busy outdoor market in Baghdad just a few hours after Zarqawi’s killing was announced. Regardless, when a dangerous terrorist can no longer wreak havoc, it’s good news.
One relevant angle to this story, however, that has not been emphasized (or even mentioned) by most news outlets this morning is that Zarqawi could have been taken out years ago, on several occasions, but Bush decided not to strike.
Benen goes on to quote an NBC article that says the National Security Council couldn’t decide how to proceed; no mention of Bush in that meeting. No mention of what the causes for concern were, but here’s an idea; the intelligence they were acting on talked about Zarqawi making ricin and cyanide production. Yet we haven’t really seen those chemicals used by the insurgency. As we all know, pre-war intelligence gave us some false positives on a number of fronts; perhaps this was one of them and the NSC was wary of it. Imagine if we’d sent in cruise missiles and wound up destroying, oh, say something like an asprin factory. Imagine the outrage by Democrats then. So here’s Benen speculating that maybe, not knowing himself the nature of the intelligence, that we might have been able to take out Zarqawi before the war. He calls the intelligence “air-tight”. Interesting he doesn’t use the phrase “slam-dunk”, a phrase used about other pre-war intelligence. Thus he has to form the wisp of a cloud just so he can try to tarnish any silver lining that appears during a Republican administration.
Was never quite sure why we didn’t go after him when we had the chance.
Anyway, I’m supposed to give the obligatory “YAY USA!” cheer here, but while it’s good to get the bad guys I don’t really think it’s going to improve much. Hopefully I’m wrong.
Top al-Qaeda guy in Iraq out of the picture, and the best he can do is be curt and “obligatory”.
Josh Marshall leaves us all wondering what he thinks, since he doesn’t say.
Zarqawi dead. Juliette Kayyem explains what it means. Ivo Daalder explains that one thing it doesn’t mean is an end to the violence in Iraq.
For the deeper background, just out from The Atlantic: Mary Anne Weaver’s The Short, Violent Life of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
That’s the sum total of his response; curt and not even obligatory.
As I said before, the view of the Left, as it was for the Hussein capture, is “This is good news, but let us remind you of all the bad news and our dire predictions.” Some don’t even say much at all about the good news. Nope, there’s a Republican in the White House, you see, and we can’t bee seen as cheering for anything. I’ll close this blog post as I did the one for Hussein.
You gotta wonder what these folks said when Milosevic was captured. Ah, but you see, that was a non-UN-sanctioned war run by a Democrat. Therein lies the whole story. Leftists are showing their true, extreme partisan colors all over the blogosphere.
(Cross-posted at Stones Cry Out, Blogger News Network and Redstate. Comments welcome.)
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