No Posthumous Victory for Zarqawi
No Posthumous Victory for Zarqawi On Wednesday, June 7, U.S. military forces, in President Bush's words, "delivered justice to the most wanted terrorist in Iraq," Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Before...
...Al Qaeda's top priority remains what it was in Ayman al-Zawahiri's letter to Zarqawi last July: "Expel the Americans from Iraq...
...If we do the latter, we will give Zarqawi a victory in death that he could not achieve in life...
...Some counterinsurgency experts would put a priority on sending additional troops to establish order in Baghdad...
...Zarqawi was a cunning and effective leader of the forces of jihadist terror...
...What are the implications for the war in Iraq...
...William Kristol...
...Zar-qawi is a perfect reminder of why we had to fight in Iraq...
...Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and al Qaeda come from different sides of the Sunni-Shiite divide, but they agree on the need to wage jihad against the West, particularly Israel and the United States...
...It is good for civilized people to see, as Marshall Wittmann put it, that "evil has suffered a setback...
...But he did not succeed, though the threat he helped create is very much with us...
...Would we be safer if he were living there, under Saddam's protection, securely planning attacks around the world and working on his chemical and biological weapons projects...
...In the blunt words of Paul Bigley of the United Kingdom, whose brother Ken was captured and beheaded by Zar-qawi, the terrorist "deserved what he got and may he rot in hell...
...There is no other successful path forward for the Bush administration than victory in Iraq...
...One might also pause to point out that if we had followed the advice of those who want to pull out from Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi would today be alive and well, and triumphant...
...If this requires 90 percent of the president's time, if it requires stressing the Pentagon and shaking up business as usual elsewhere in the administra-tion—so be it...
...His brutality against civilians— Shiites mostly, but also Sunnis who wanted to work to create a new Iraq—helped push Iraq dangerously close to a sectarian civil war and ethnic cleansing, and gravely endangered Iraq's brave experiment in democratic federalism and freedom...
...We highly recommend the strategy laid out three weeks ago in these pages by Frederick W. Kagan (see "A Plan for Victory in Iraq," May 29) for a comprehensive execution of the clear/hold/build approach in the Euphrates Valley, to be accomplished by Iraqi and U.S...
...Or do we do look on this as an excuse to begin to get out—as John Kerry and many others are already advocating...
...That depends on some factors that we can't yet know with any confidence—the resilience of al Qaeda's leadership in Iraq, for one thing, and the true sentiment among the Sunnis of Iraq...
...But whatever operational choices are made, now is the time to take our best shot at really improving the situation on the ground in Iraq...
...To which, surely, Americans must respond: No posthumous victories for Zarqawi...
...But it also depends on what we do...
...The unjust—even the barbarically unjust—prevail all too often in this world...
...What needs to be done now seems clear: a renewed offensive to wipe out what remains of Zarqawi's organization and to defeat the insurgency...
...Before considering the possible implications for the war in Iraq and the global struggle against terror, we should pause to celebrate so striking an instance of injustice avenged, and justice vindicated...
...Do we take advantage of this opportunity politically and militarily...
...forces working together—something that cannot be accomplished if we draw down U.S...
...As Saul Singer noted in the Jerusalem Post, we are "witnessing the seam-lessness of jihad...
...The death of Zar-qawi saddens all of them, just as it causes encouragement for free peoples everywhere...
...When he died, Palestinian foreign minister Mahmoud al-Zahar, a leader of Hamas, linked the "resistance" in Iraq to that against Israel, deploring what he termed the "assassination" of Zarqawi...
...It is also the time to revisit the case for the war...
...Zarqawi's life and death remind us that we are engaged in a global struggle...
...Do we pursue the enemy aggressively now when it may be rattled and divided...
Vol. 11 • June 2006 • No. 38
