al-Zarqawi Dead

So all of you have heard that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been killed in a coalition airstrike. That is great. Justice is served. The death penalty is what he deserved.

But in this infuriating week of issues that don't change anything (gay marriage, flag burning, estate tax), this is clearly just one more thing that doesn't really affect many lives.

And yet the press goes ballistic on this stuff. They eat it up. Which I guess was the point of some of Gretchen's commentary on our last This And That Podcast. It reminds me of Speilberg's film last year - "Munich" - where the lesson was that killing leaders of movements don't make the movements go away - in fact, it usually makes them more intense by upping the 'ante' on revenge.

You make movements go away by removing the motivation for the movements in the first place. Killing al-Zarqawi may make all of us feel good but I'm afraid that that response is just too easy. Al-Zarqawi, and for that matter, Osama Bin Laden, are simply faces that we have learned to identify with the terrorist movement. Sure they are and have been vibrant leaders in the insurgency, but it's dangerously wrong to use their fates as a way to measure our success in putting the insurgency down.

This is understood by our leaders in the middle of it. General George W. Casey said "Although the designated leader of al Qaeda in Iraq is now dead, the terrorist organization will continue to try to terrorize the Iraqi people". And according to CNN, experts have said that although al Qaeda in Iraq received lots of attention and headlines in the Western press, there are thousands of small insurgency groups carrying out attacks in Iraq.

So al-Zarqawi is dead. Great. Death means more to us than it did for him, anyways. These guys know they will be martyred because they are fighting for something that is greater than their lives in their view. I've read some blogs where people are SO happy that he is dead. Well, death may be the ultimate punishment for some of us westerners, but it's clearly not for these guys.

Now, can we please get back to the important issues in the land - say, the flag burning amendment?