Ding Dong Zarqawi's Dead

It is always good to see a murderous psychopath get his just desserts and make no mistake, Zarqawi was an evil muthafucker. But at the end of the day, I don't think this is a significant victory except as a form of vengeance for all the people he's had a hand in murdering.

First question that popped into my mind: Does the pilot of the plane that dropped the bomb on him get to paint a dead terrorist leader on the nose of his plane? I know if I'm the guy I'm painting a fat, balding guy with a beard right under my cockpit.

Seriously though, here's the deal. The only way this has a significant long-term impact on Iraq is if in his absence anti-Shiia violence goes down. Zarqawi hated Shiias like Hitler had a thing for Jews. So, IF his successor(s) -- and believe me there are plenty of assholes lining up to step into his still-smoking boots -- tone down the Sunni-on-Shiia violence then there might be some long term upside for Iraq. Otherwise basically all we've got here is one more dead murderous psychopath with delusions of grandeur in a region that seems to have cornered the market on that particular demographic.

Update: 6.10.2005From the utterly indespensable blog Global Guerrillas comes this thoughtful bit of Zarqawi post-mortem analysis.

Zarqawi in Context
Here's how Zarqawi's role evolved:

• In the early phases of the guerrilla war in Iraq, Zarqawi was operational as the commander of a small cell. His group was able, through early large scale attacks, to set a plausible promise (an idea that many other groups could rally around) for the Iraqi insurgency. Namely, that it was possible to successfully fight the US occupation.


• During late 2004 and early 2005, his operational value diminished as the number of groups that were engaged in the war proliferated. During that time, he was focused on expanding the target set of the insurgency to include infrastructure, corporations and Iraqi military units. Later in 2005, his operational activities were focused on shifting the plausible promise of the insurgency from ousting the Americans to fighting Shiite domination (sectarian war) through attacks on Shiite civilians and symbols


• By early 2006, Zarqawi's operational activities were all but over. He had succeeded in seeding the original insurgency and shifting the plausible promise to include sectarian warfare. During this final phase, Zarqawi moved into a role of strategic communicator, much like bin Laden's role today. In this role, he produced videos that were distributed to a global audience through the Internet and global media.

Epilogue
Unfortunately, Zarqawi proved to be rather good at his role. Here's how to rate his abilities:

He successfully seeded the insurgency.

Innovation and adaptability. He expanded the target set for the insurgency, changed tactics when they proved disadvantageous (ie. beheadings were stopped and he ceded Iraqis control of the jihadi effort), and expanded the plausible promise of the insurgency to include sectarian war.

His main failure was that he didn't fully appreciate the value of systems disruption. His only attack on a systems target (the Basra terminal) was a failure. He also proved unable to give up operational roles in favor of becoming a strategic communicator (which ultimately led to his death).

ONE final note: If we put Zarqawi within a historical context, he was able to do what Che hoped to do with a foco insurgency (for more on this, read the brief on "Iraq and Foco Insurgency"). In essence, he proved that within a modern context (open source warfare and systems disruption), it is possible to seed the collapse of a state (or more precisely, keep a state in a perpetual failure).