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Good Day's Work
Why Zarqawi's death matters.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Thursday, June 8, 2006, at 2:00 PM ET



The death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is excellent news in its own right and even more excellent if, as U.S. sources in Iraq are claiming, it resulted from information that derived from people who were or had been close to him. (And, if that claim is black propaganda, then it is clever black propaganda, which is also excellent news.)

It hasn't taken long for the rain to start falling on this parade. Nick Berg's father, a MoveOn type now running for Congress on the Green Party ticket, has already said that he blames President George Bush for the video-beheading of his own son (but of course) and mourned the passing of Zarqawi as he would the death of any man (but of course, again). The latest Atlantic has a brilliantly timed cover story by Mary Anne Weaver, which tends to the view that Zarqawi was essentially an American creation, but seems to undermine its own prominence by suggesting that, in addition to that, Zarqawi wasn't all that important.

Not so fast. Zarqawi contributed enormously to the wrecking of Iraq's experiment in democratic federalism. He was able to help ensure that the Iraqi people did not have one single day of respite between 35 years of war and fascism, and the last three-and-a-half years of misery and sabotage. He chose his targets with an almost diabolical cunning, destroying the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad (and murdering the heroic envoy S�rgio Vieira de Melo) almost before it could begin operations, and killing the leading Shiite Ayatollah Hakim outside his place of worship in Najaf. His decision to declare a jihad against the Shiite population in general, in a document of which Weaver (on no evidence) doubts the authenticity, has been the key innovation of the insurgency: applying lethal pressure to the most vulnerable aspect of Iraqi society. And it has had the intended effect, by undermining Grand Ayatollah Sistani and helping empower Iranian-backed Shiite death squads.

Not bad for a semiliterate goon and former jailhouse enforcer from a Bedouin clan in Jordan. There are two important questions concerning the terrible influence that he has been able to exert. The first is: How much state and para-state support did he enjoy? The second is: What was the nature of his relationship with Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaida?

For the defeatists and pacifists, these are easy questions to answer. Colin Powell was wrong to identify Zarqawi, in his now-notorious U.N. address, as a link between the Saddam regime and the Bin-Ladenists. The man's power was created only by the coalition's intervention, and his connection to al Qaida was principally opportunistic. On this logic, the original mistake of the United States would have been to invade Afghanistan, thereby forcing Zarqawi to flee his camp outside Herat and repositioning him for a new combat elsewhere. Thus, fighting against al-Qaida is a mistake to begin with: It only encourages them.

I think that (for once) Colin Powell was on to something. I know that Kurdish intelligence had been warning the coalition for some time before the invasion that former Afghanistan combatants were making their way into Iraq, which they saw as the next best chance to take advantage of a state that was both "failed" and "rogue." One might add that Iraq under Saddam was not an easy country to enter or to leave, and that no decision on who was allowed in would be taken by a junior officer. Furthermore, the Zarqawi elements appear to have found it their duty to join with the Ansar al-Islam splinter group in Kurdistan, which for some reason thought it was the highest duty of jihad to murder Saddam Hussein's main enemies. But perhaps I have a suspicious mind.

We happen to know that the Baathist regime was recruiting and training foreign fighters and brigading them with the gruesome "Fedayeen Saddam." (This is incidentally a clue to what the successor regime in Iraq might have looked like as the Saddam-plus-sanctions state imploded and Baathism itself went into eclipse.) That bomb at the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, for example, was no improvised explosive device. It was a huge charge of military-grade ordnance. Are we to believe that a newly arrived Bedouin Jordanian thug could so swiftly have scraped acquaintance with senior-level former Baathists? (The charges that destroyed the golden dome of the Shiites in Samarra were likewise rigged and set by professional military demolitionists.)

Zarqawi's relations with Bin Laden are a little more tortuous. Mary Anne Weaver shows fairly convincingly that the two men did not get along and were in some sense rivals for the leadership. That's natural enough: Religious fanatics are schismatic by definition. Zarqawi's visceral hatred of the Shiite heresy was unsettling even to some more mainstream Wahhabi types, as was his undue relish in making snuff videos. (How nice to know that these people do have their standards.) However, when Zarqawi sought the franchise to call his group "al-Qaida in Mesopotamia," he was granted it with only a few admonitions.

Most fascinating of all is the suggestion that Zarqawi was all along receiving help from the mullahs in Iran. He certainly seems to have been able to transit their territory (Herat is on the Iranian border with Afghanistan) and to replenish his forces by the same route. If this suggestive connection is proved, as Weaver suggests it will be, then we have the Shiite fundamentalists in Iran directly sponsoring the murderer of their co-religionists in Iraq. This in turn would mean that the Iranian mullahs stood convicted of the most brutish and cynical irresponsibility, in front of their own people, even as they try to distract attention from their covert nuclear ambitions. That would be worth knowing. And it would become rather difficult to argue that Bush had made them do it, though no doubt the attempt will be made.

If we had withdrawn from Iraq already, as the "peace" movement has been demanding, then one of the most revolting criminals of all time would have been able to claim that he forced us to do it. That would have catapulted Iraq into Stone Age collapse and instated a psychopathic killer as the greatest Muslim soldier since Saladin. As it is, the man is ignominiously dead and his dirty connections a lot closer to being fully exposed. This seems like a good day's work to me.

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His most recent book is Thomas Jefferson: Author of America. His most recent collection of essays is titled Love, Poverty, and War.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2143305/
Copyright 2006 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

[Hollywoodaction]

Well...

The death of Zarqawi will not put an end to the insurgency. In fact, it might aggravate things because he is now a martyr in the eyes of his supporters. But, more importantly, Zarqawi has already succeeded in his mission: making the US lose lot of power and prestige around the world. In any case, his death does little to change the fact that the mission in Iraq will remain a failure until peace is achieved.

[Kuros]

[pussinboots]

Kuros,
Was that meant to be satire? Or do you really believe the rubbish you're spouting? If so, it is a sad waste of a fine liberal education.

Think about it. The reason the resistance can not be rounded up in one fell swoop is because it is so radically decentralized (as well as spontaneously rising up everywhere).

And are you so naive to think that one guy (who, has lost already what, 400 "top lieutenants"?) has somehow got his hand on the suicide bomber spigot? There is no "Network". There are a million tiny networks- of people working only with those they intimately trust.

Where could you have come up with this idiotic idea of a "Network" with a "Terrorist Mastermind" pulling the strings at the centre, like Dr. No or something? Oh, that's right. You didn't. Rather you absorbed it uncritically from "trusted sources" without ever bothering to reflect on just how trustworthy those sources might be. Because of this you have allowed blatant propaganda to filter into your thinking as gospel truth. Shadows on the cave wall, Kuros.

This media event will no doubt unravel pretty quickly. It's entertaining though to see just what a shameless *beep* Christoper Hitchens has become. Just when you think he couldn't get any lower....

[Kuros]

[Hollywoodaction]

[ddeubel]

Pussinboots,

Wow! Where did you come from??? I second your emotion and you have taken in enough info. in my opinion, to have formed a very thoughtful analysis. Wish that others would see some "light" and not put everything into theories of leaders/big men/organizations/news reportage. Fact is, so much is proximate and happens because of a very simple fact -- Americans there -- Americans out...........

DD

PS. Hitchens should stick to his art schtick.....

[igotthisguitar]

June 8, 2006

Al-Zarqawi Killed � Again

This guy is harder to kill than James Bond!

Let�s review, and note the dates:
http://derekpgilbert.com/?p=2159

[pussinboots]

[pussinboots]

Correction - A blood bath is already underway.

[Hollywoodaction]

The timing of his death is a bit too convenient, for obvious reasons. Mainly, it diverts attention away from the investigation on the murder of civilians that is taking place. Do you think they have known where he's been hiding for a long time? If so, why only now? I'm playing the devil's advocate here, but I'd say that delayed a strike against him until one of the terrible crimes commited by US soldiers couldn't be covered up.

[Hollywoodaction]

What makes the whole thing suspicious is how the US government is flaunting that they acted on an 'Iraqi tip' and that they were offering a 25 million dollar reward for such information. If it was true, they wouldn't divulge that information. I also wonder if Zarqawi's last words really were unintelligable.

[Gopher]

[Leslie Cheswyck]

[Hollywoodaction]