Today American Special Forces and the United States Air Force killed the thuggish leader of al-Quaeda in Mesopotamia, Abu Al-Zarqawi through a combination of tips, ground work and surveillance, and two bombs dropped from F-16 Air Craft. This is certainly a very positive event for all involved but I feel it has quickly grown out of context.
For the Soldiers, Airmen, and other men and women involved, it should be noted that the operation was very extensive and well-coordinated and will have far reaching effects beyond the simple eradication of one of the world's most famous dogs. Seven aides to Al-Zarqawi were killed as well and given the way he worked and his probable level of actual skill, these may have been much more influential on the daily operation of the organization than Zarqawi himself. Also, once it was known that he was killed, they took down or attacked seventeen other houses that were under surveillance. Our troops obviously had a well developed intelligence network and system of observation posts that allowed them to monitor these locations and act quickly. That's good news - that they could work with the politics and the culture to acquire that intelligence and then to wait sagely until the right time to act on it. I think that, in the end, the others killed all at once will expose more weakness in his organization than the lack of one simple terrorist.
What seems to have been forgotten in all the jubilation by the media are a couple of points. First, that Al-Zarqawi actually controlled little of the day to day violence our troops face in Iraq. The small stream of foreign fighters that did exist in Iraq has been seriously squelched of late by all reports and I saw with my eyes how the Iraqis hated foreigners and 'Free Arabs' that came in to their country to do violence. Zarqawi and his organization may or may not have had a few realy spectacular scores - the UN Headquarters, the al-Askari mosque in Samarra, his reputed close escapes from coalition forces. But he also angered the very people he was supposed to lead, feuded with the real al-Quaeda, and failed to get the hot civil war he wanted. It seems too, that the actual death of Zarqawi was an accident, the house he was killed in was targeted for another person and his body happened to be found inside. Watch for that to vanish from memory soon.
Next, let's not overstate his importance or efficacy. Many experts recognize that Zarqawi was often a convenient boogey-man, someone to personalize the fight in Iraq with, and that much of his 'legend' was a psyops construct. Now that the Army has published this cleaned up photo of his corpse, he will probably be of at least as much utility to his followers now as when he was running around in his American sneakers burning himself on his machine gun barrel. Zarqawi was neither brilliant nor skilled and not always very charismatic. The more you read about him, the more you realize that he was basically a mujahadeen wannabe that memorized a bunch of the Koran. And apparently he did have both his legs.
And last, but never least, let's review how Zarqawi came to be important to start with and why he was still alive yesterday to be killed today. Zarqawi, a poor street thug and criminal was radicalized and inspired in harsh prisons operated by regimes that we, the United States supported. he had dreams of becoming like the mujahadeen we sponsored in Afghanistan that eventually came to haunt us. He escaped to Iraq and hid in the Kurdish north after we responded to the Taliban with not enough forces. In a particularly ironic twist, strikes against him and his Ansar al-Islam buddies were deferred by the current administration in order to have a 'terrorist' in Iraq to blame on Saddam Hussein. It was the sorry, semi-abandoned village of Ansar al-Islam that Colin Powell did his song and dance at the UN about. And was proved wrong within hours by a young newspaper reporter. And it was people like Zarqawi that took advantage of the confusion created when Iraq collapsed and there weren't enough troops from any side to keep order.
So, to summarize, I am glad he's gone, but it seems about three years and many thousands of dead too late. Now, how about that cabinet, Mr. Iraqi president? And how about that defense budget, Mr. American president?