Okay - rather than snark on by, please lay out exactly how the success of this event is going to play out. What will we see in the next week that will indicate this was successful? How about over the next month? What milestones will we view to know that we should hang our heads in shame having failed to believe Shodan and his cohort’s collective wisdom?
My guess is that nothing remarkable will be evident, and that when we point out that the insurgents continue to engage in acts of violence at roughly the same rate, we will be told that we are failing to take note of all the schools that have been built, or that electricity is available for an additional 15 minutes on Tuesdays. We will then be treated to a rant about the failings of the MSM and aspersions cast at the journalists in the region.
If we’re told anything at all, and you (in general terms) haven’t slunk back into your fortified dens with your Limbaugh tuned into the radio, or if you even post on the SDMB any more. Here’s a glass raised to the fallen SDMB conservatives: if only they were here today they could share in your predictive (and exceptionally predictable) outrage.
Clearly I was mistaken in confusing our Ryan Liam with the one that opened a pit thread regarding Riverbend you know, the young woman critical of the war, who lives in Iraq.
There is no distinction, as the death of a major al-Queda operative as part of the war in Iraq demonstrates.
Sounds like you are hedging your bets so that you can condemn whatever happens, no matter what happens.
Like I said, the same will happen if and when we get bin Laden. A constant chorus of “we should be concentrating on bin Laden!” followed by “this means nothing! Nothing, I tell you!” Just like it was “we should be concentrating on al-Queda” until we kill its most active operative, when it switched to “this is terrible - there will be a thousand more recruits!”
We will see the Usual Suspects hail it as a major defeat for the US, an opportunity to condemn Bush, and a dozen or so Pit threads will be spawned attacking anyone and anything they can think of relating to it.
I’m with **JC **on this one. I don’t know how al-Qaeda in Iraq (or whatever he group is called) is organized and I don’t think anyone here does either. There are (at a high level) two wars going on in Iraq-- one is a power struggle between the various ethnic groups and the other (Zarqawi’s war) is one of broad terrorism with no specific political objective. To the extent that US troops remain in Iraq to eradicate Zarqawi’s war, this may help us get out of there sooner. I’d like to hope that’s the case, but I’m not overly optimistic.
I think DtC’s hydra analysis is a good one for the civil strife going on right now, but I’m not so sure it’s correct for the al-Qaeda inspired terrorism that exists there. We’ll see.
I take this as an indication that you are unable to identify anything that will actually determine whether this event can be called a success in regards to the war in Iraq or the War on Terror. Either that, or you are unwilling to actually commit to any standards of measurement, lest it be evident that you were wrong about this, too.
One thing definitely worth considering is al-Zarqawi’s death may have been, to a significan extent, an inside job. We wouldn’t have found him without tipoffs (see Haroborwolf above), and the scuttlebutt appears to be these tipoffs may have come from fairly high up in the AQ food chain. Perhaps OBL and/or others who are by no means friends of the USA wanted him dead.
al-Zarqawi’s brand of insurgency was a particularly swaggering, brutal, and dirty one (from an Arab perspective, at least), where innocent Iraqis were frequently and quite deliberately targeted to foment internal conflict, the idea being that fanning the flames of sectarian hatred within Iraq would precipitate conditions that would speed US withdrawl. al-Z. made a lot of enemies both within and outside of Iraq with this program, and it’s probably a safe bet those enemies included other AQ leadership. His movement certainly seems conterproductive considering some of OBL’s stated goals, as well as his exhortations for Iraqis to stop killing each other and focus on Americans.
So, again, that’s something to think about pretty seriously, I suspect.
The number 2 man in Al Qaeda is Ayman al-Zawahiri. Always was and always will be until the happy day when he is killed or captured. I’ve never understood this meme on the left that we’re always getting the number two guy. Zawahiri is the number two guy, a fact that was well known even before 9/11. Zarqawi was the head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and was frequently at odds with the regular Al-Qaeda, especially over his attacks which killed Arabs, like the Jordan hotel bombings.
Sorry for the hijack. As far as the OP, it won’t make that much of a difference. First someone else is going to replace him. Second, the problem in Iraq isn’t Zarqawi, it’s the lawless chaos that allows someone like him, or the sectarian gangs, to flourish. I’m still glad he’s dead, and I hope the bastard suffered.
What we’re talking about here is the violence in Iraq. You’ve probably noticed that Sunnis and Shi’ites are killing each other in fairly significant numbers of late. You’ve also probably realized that killing Zarqawi isn’t going to make the animosity underlying those killings go away, nor do those on either side lack the means to continue the killing.
(b) Sure, it’s a success; it’s just not a particularly meaningful one, in terms of the big picture. Compared to, say, Saddam’s capture, this should be small potatoes. As you can see from that link, and the one above referencing Uday and Qusay, I have had my moments of celebration over such transitory victories. I have learned that there’s no point in celebrating. Do you claim I should have learned some other lesson? If so, make your case.
Everybody knows why we aren’t concentrating on bin Laden: virtually our entire conventional military might is bogged down in Iraq.
Despite that - and despite the reality that bin Laden’s death or capture would be less significant strategically now, under what is believed to be a much more decentralized al Qaeda network, than it would have been three or four years ago - our failure to kill or capture the man behind the killing of 3000 Americans on 9/11 is still a huge failure. We owe it to the dead, and to their survivors, to make sure he doesn’t get away with it.
Hey, imagine Shodan reflexively defending Bush, no matter how great the fuckup. Who’d’a thunk?
IIRC, there were later reports that Zarqawi regained his leading position, but it’s tough to decide what’s believable, and what’s BS. Regardless of how hard it is to confirm details, it does seem that al-Qaeda in Iraq has a viable organization even without Zarqawi.
Sorry, I don’t do “there’s a rebuttal to you somewhere at this link, why don’t you go look for it?”
If you want to make an argument, make it, and dig up your own support. It’s not my job to find the support for your argument and for my own, thanks.
Cite? I haven’t seen this in the news reports I’ve read.
If they had him surrounded, though, they should have been able to capture him on their own if they were any good. Obviously we didn’t have much faith in them, if it happened this way.
The one essential function of government is to hold a monopoly on major violence. Absent that, all of a government’s other successes are undermined. Now that I’ve reminded you of that, I think you can see that the Iraqi government is nowhere close to governing.
All of which would be more understandable if, by most metrics, Iraq was gradually becoming more peaceful and more secure over that period. Unfortunately, exactly the opposite has been happening.
It’s one thing to say, “they haven’t come far enough yet, but be patient” if they’re going in the right direction. If they’re not, it makes no sense at all.
That’s bullshit. Before we ever even began the invasion, I was saying we would win. I expected to win handily and said so. Winning or losing has never had a thing to do with my opposition the Iraq War.
I seriously doubt his death will serve as any more inspiration, honestly, or that his supposed martyrdom will have any impact. It will certainly disrupt whatever operations his organization was doing. In time nobody kows what will happen to it. It could whither and die or it could be built up with new leadership.
But even if it does die, those who were in it will just create havoc elsewhere with other groups. In the big picture it will probably have little impact one way or the other, but it still had to be done, of course.
Morale, IMO, is what all of the car bombings and Zarqawi sponsored video beheadings are/were about. Zarqawi made himself the face of much of that and his death, as that hated face, helps. So, if the US and Iraqi personnel take this as good news, and I think they will, then the answer is yes, it will make some difference. How long that lasts, is a separate question from whether one will or will not occur.
Nobody has mentionned this yet but the bombs they used to kill Zarqawi ALSO killed a woman and a child. Now the woman might or might not be innocent but the child certainly was.
See, this is what fuels extremist violence against civilians. Why send a bomb that you know is going to kill everybody in the building instead of sending in a SWAT team ? At least give any innocent parties a chance at survival.
This is how the U.S gains more supporters for Alquaeda. You can’t say it’s evil to use bombs to murder innocent civilians and children and then turn around and do the same.
So, why wasn’t a SWAT team sent? God knows there is no lack of highly trained soldiers in Baghdad. I’ll tell you what an Iraqi will think:
To the americans, wrongfully killing innocent arabs and their children is better than risking the injury or deaths of a few of their military personnel. Their lives just aren’t worth as much.
Does anyone really think that calling this a war on terror and talking about the inevitability of collateral damage makes it all OK?