A VIEW FROM THE CHEAP SEATS
By Rich Trzupek
Ticket to Paradise
So we get Zarqawi. Bout time. Will it signal the end of idiocy in Iraq? Of course not, as the military and the President have carefully explained. Is it an enormous blow to the Islamo-fascists? You bet.
One need look no further than the insurgents and their supporters to realize how important this is. The reponse from the suicide-bomber crowd follows two basic tracks.
Some mourn Zarqawi, christen him a martyr and assure us that the resistance will redouble its efforts now that their leader is hanging out with all of those virgins.
Others dismiss the significance of the event altogether. Some not only question Zarqawi�s importance, they deny his very existence. Some bloggers claim that Zarqawi was an American invention, created by the CIA to enflame Iraqis against the insurgents. We killed a ghost they say, so who the hell cares?
Understand that we�re dealing with gangsters who don�t lie as means of avoiding the truth. They lie because that�s the way they communicate. When we consider the Islamo-fascists�
statements, we should consider not what they say, but what they�re trying to prevent us from thinking.
When they�re taking great pains to say that Zarqawi never mattered, we can fairly conclude that he did. If that sounds like the psychology that we normally associate with a petulant 10-year-old, it�s because that�s what it is.
The other form of denial is to admit the Zarqawi was an important figure in the insurgency, but that the terrorists will be even stronger now that he�s ex-post facto. If that was the case you�d think that the Al Quida goof balls would have taken it upon themselves to strap a few pounds of C-4 to big Z�s back long ago. Hey, it would make them stronger, right?
Don�t believe for a minute there aren�t millions of Muslims happy to see Zarqawi taking the trip to the next life thouth. He was hardly a beloved figure in a large part of the Arab world.
As a religious fanatic, the guy earned the hatred of Shi�as, whom he loathed and killed. He was supposedly fighting the heathen west, but he murdered more innocent fellow Muslims than coalition troops. When Zarqawi bombed an Arab wedding, thousands upon thousands of fellow Muslims took to the street to denounce the outrage.
He put the insurgents in a tough spot. On the one hand he was an effective, if bloody, commander. On the other hand, his insistence on targeting fellow Muslims eroded the insurgencies� base of support. It�s hard to build up support against a �foreign oppressor� when you�re responsible for more oppression than the enemy could ever dream of.
His successors face an equally difficult choice in Iraq. If they continue with Zarqawi�s program of self-destruction, they risk alienating even more of the populace. But if they focus exclusively on western targets in Iraq, they won�t be able to stay relevant.
Iraq is largely a media war. The insurgents need a constant stream of bloody headlines to erode western support for a war the terrorists know they can not win, but which we can choose to lose. Body counts are everything.
If they focus their efforts solely on soldiers, it�s a lot harder for the terrorists to run up a meaningful score in the media battle. Iraqi, American and British troops are a lot harder to kill than families at the local mosque. Worse, trained combat troops fight back.
Which brings us back to the big question, if you�re Zarqawi�s successor. Do you continue to bomb mosques and blow up ambulances to ring up numbers, while pissing off the populace you claim to support?
Or, do you try to fight enemy troops, a dangerous exercise which may help you a bit among the populace, but which will seriously erode your attempts to create the kind of chaos you need to outlast your opponent?
Given the alternatives, the smarter play would be to find a new battle field. If this battle is supposed to be about defeating the heathen west, why not take the infidels on, on their own soil? There�s no ambiguity there.
This the terrorists will not be able to do, not until the battle for Iraq is settled. Which is the real value of choosing this fight. It�s a challenge to everything the terrorists stand for. They can not, will not, back away. It�s a matter of pride, which does indeed goeth before a fall.
The longer this goes on, the more resources they will pour into Iraq, while all remains fairly quiet on the western front. Which means, thanks to the bravery and skill of our troops, we will win, as long a we continue to retain the will to accept the victory that the world needs.
