Justus For All

Yup, I’m very pleased about this. Less so about the individual, but more about our intelligence having a good success story.

I’m curious to see how the left community will take this news. Ignore it? Dismiss it? Personally, I think the right reaction is to commend the achievements of our military, but stay on message that there wouldn’t be a Zarqawi (at least as he is known today) if our foreign policy had played out differently. But most importantly, dismissing this achievement would be insulting and disrespectful to those who worked hard to make this happen.

The individual not being around is a very good thing. The man was a rabid dog who needed to be put down. While this of course will not end all the violence in Iraq it is a very good thing.

While we cannot say for certain what would have been, it would be wrong to pretend that the Iraq war radicalized and we ‘created’ him by going there. Certainly his specific actions would have been different, but it is pretty clear that he wanted to be a big name terrorist before we went to Iraq, and there is no reason to believe that he wouldn’t have achieved his goal regardless.

Perhas more important than the success of our soldiers in making this happen is the success of the Iraqi people in making this happen.

Patrick, I hope it is not your contention that “if our foreign policy had played out differently.” You would be correct if you were attributing this oversimplified tripe to leftist critics of the war.

Basically, U.S. foreign policy is irrelevant if you observe that Islamists are motivated by an expansionist perversion of religion. U.S. foreign policy is also less relevant all along “Islam’s bloody perimeter” (Bernard Lewis’s term): Kosovo, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir, South Phillipines, East Timor, etc. The problem the world has with Jihadists is not because these people are pursuing a legitimate grievance very aggressively. That is, of course, the position articulated by bin Laden’s fatwas, often mindlessly parroted by suicidal leftist pseudo-pacifists.

So I dismiss out of hand the “there wouldn’t be a Zarqawi” crap. I’m just happy that “there isn’t a Zarqawi anymore” thanks to superior firepower.

In closing, al Qaeda in Iraq has tried to put a brave face on events: “The death of our leaders is life for us.”

La Ch’aim!

I agree that this is a success for the Iraqi people and the soldiers. But what I’m also saying is that, if one wants to have a responsible debate about Iraq, one could argue that he would have never had the opportunities to kill so many people or cause such a large disruption if the Iraq war never happened.

I think that that is the responsible way to respond to good news if you’re on the left. That way you can show your support for the progress being made, but still be mindful that this progress was only necessary due to previous political actions you didn’t agree with.

I’ve seen a few responses so far, and none of them very good. At one blog, they pointed out Bush had a chance to get this guy a couple years ago. I think that’s unfair to everyone, since it assumes that we know *this* man would be the one to enter the Iraq vacuum and be the figure head of the new terrorist movement there.

Another, on kos in the comments, kept harping on how “justice” and “death” are not the same thing. I think that’s just silly in this case, and it is responses like that that rally those on the right. In fact, the two left responses I’ve seen are at direct odds with each other (we should have killed him sooner vs. we shouldn’t have killed him and instead should have arrested him).

I think that if anyone who opposes the war is going to be honest with himself, there has to be some acknowledgment that there *is* a slight disappointment when good news comes in, and there *is* equally an opposite reaction when bad news comes in (Haditha, for example). While folks like Ann Coulter will go on that the left cheers for Haditha and cries for today’s news, they are way over the top.

However, it would be dishonest for me to say that much smaller levels of satisfaction or dissatisfaction come with the bad and good news. It’s only human.

So the responsible thing to do is to get over those initial feelings and see the progress for what it is: progress. Then go back and stay focussed on your core message: you oppose the war and this progress wouldn’t have had to have been made had things played out differently.

Perhaps one could point out that recent efforts with Iran show that giving a little in negotiations might be a way to achieve progress diplomatically. I certainly am very happy with what is going on with Iran, and I think that, while it was a huge cost to pay, the US leadership has learned a lesson about how to work with these problem countries.

Dealing with policy’s and politics you don’t agree with can be a difficult thing. I know that I have come to regret my feelings on the Bosnian conflict. At the time I was sure that a pure air campaign without ‘boots on the ground’ was sure to fail and that the entire conflict was mostly in relation to domestic politics and wasn’t sincere. Those beliefs led me to, without really thinking about it, hoping that the effort would fail.

I was clearly wrong on the first account, and probably wrong on the second. Even if their were domestic considerations, the cause was just and I should have supported it regardless. At the very least I should have hoped that it would work.

It is obvious that Zarqawi’s specific actions in recent years were only made possible by our pressence in Iraq. What we don’t know of course is what he would have done instead. He could have been the next Mohammad Atta. He is probably the best argument there is for ‘fighting them there so we don’t fight them here.’

Certainly though the ‘yes it was good but’ that is coming from a lot of the left today is not terribly admirable. I can understand the impulse, but I don’t think it is correct, and I certainly don’t think it will help them politically.

As for Iran, I think you are premature in calling it ‘progress.’ Pretty much we are where things were several months ago with the exception that we are offering Iran more. I don’t see any real reason for Iran to agree at this time.

Even if they do agree, I worry that it won’t actually solve anything. We will be bribing them, but there is no real reason that they should stay bribed. They will still be seeking nuclear weapons. At the most this might buy us a couple more years (not a horrible outcome, but hardly optimum) and it may be far more difficult to get any international consensus next time (and it hasn’t been easy this time.) It is possible that this deal will Iran, if it goes though, will come to be regarded much like Clinton’s deal with North Korea.

Dave,
I appreciate your honesty – it’s hard “putting it all out there”, especially when you know people could really trounce on you for simply being open about the elephant in the room.

Re: Iran (we’re getting off subject here, but I always enjoy these types of talks) – you’re right, it is a bit too premature, assuming the goal is ultimately getting Iran to stop enrichment now. On the other hand, there is progress if the shorter term goal is to get Russia and China to be on our side and, when the time comes, to say to them “hey, we really tried everything you asked us to” and, we hope, get their support.

I think that containment may end up being the only option we can pursue at this point, considering the complex world dynamics and the very low image the US has with most of the UN allies. But containment isn’t so bad either. If we can truly effectively contain an enemy, is it any different than destroying him? Sort of like, if a tree falls in the forest…

“I think that containment may end up being the only option we can pursue at this point, considering the complex world dynamics and the very low image the US has with most of the UN allies. But containment isn’t so bad either. If we can truly effectively contain an enemy, is it any different than destroying him? Sort of like, if a tree falls in the forest…”

Patrick, that is the kind of sense that I would have supported 200% had it been expressed prior to the invasion of Iraq – irrespective of the justification and rationale.

As for dealing Iran to Russia and China, “you support their direction – you deal with the consequences” is a sentiment I have expressed myself in the past.

Dave, there is only one small fear that I have on the death of Zarqawi – which of the rabid dogs in the pack is going to replace him. I hear from the Beeb this morning that there is a good chance that much of the command structure may have been taken out in this one strike. Even if that is so, I am not going to shout “Hurrah!!” until the insurgency, sectarian killings, and political disorder has reduced at least.

There are levels of containment. I expect that with an assured destruction model we can prevent Iran from launching a weapon at Israel (although even then my comfort level is not as high as I would like) but a nuclear Iran will be hard to contain in other ways. For example, if Iran decides to increase its support of terror our options are much more limited if Iran is armed with nukes. The same would be true for stopping an expansionist conventional attack.

In 1991 Saddam was perhaps a year or two away from nuclear weapons. If he had waited to attack Kuwait until he had them, it would have been very difficult to reverse that conquest, and certainly it would have been far more dangerous to do so.

We may end up having to live with containment. I suspect if we do though, we won’t be at all happy about it.

“Even if that is so, I am not going to shout “Hurrah!!” until the insurgency, sectarian killings, and political disorder has reduced at least.”

This is quickly becoming the Standard Anti War Point. But is it really your position that we should never celebrate a victorious battle until we’ve won the entire war? If so, you should know that you’re asking people to behave in a way that is unique in human history.

Good luck with that.

The problem with a “mutually assured destruction” model is that it only works if destruction is undesireable to both parties. It worked in the Cold War because the atheist Soviet regime didn’t believe any reward was forthcoming in the afterlife.

Shia Islam places great emphasis on its martyrs. Ahmadinejad’s sect, which believes it is living in end-times anyway, might find it acceptable to wipe out Israel at the expense of massive retaliatory U.S. response. They can do it without a “return address” on the bomb, as some commentators have observed. In such a context, I’m not sure containment is a viable option for very long. You are betting that Iran’s mullahcracy are all rational actors. Some might be; it is not at all clear to me that we are dealing with a monolithic ruling regime there. Potentially exploitable rifts must exist.

I think, given the history and character of Iran’s past negotiations with Jimmy Carter (see Guests of the Ayatollah by Mark Bowden for an excellent account), they will pursue a strictly Fabian diplomacy. They will inflame an outcry from leftists and the press in the U.S. and U.K. until domestic pressure forces some asinine compromise. God help us if a Democrat is in office.

No, Brian, it is a case of not counting a victory in terms of the death of one man.

Would the US capitulate if AlQaeda were to assassinate GWB? Like h3!! you would!

So, then, why should the death of one man be the victory that you claim it to be?

I really don’t think this is that hard to understand, Probligo. In the war we’re currently fighting, there are no cities to take and no battlefields from which to drive the enemy. There are only bad men to find and kill. Every one of them we find and kill is thus a small battle that we’ve won within the larger war. The more important the bad guy, the bigger the victory. Zarqawi was a pretty big bad guy, and his death is a pretty big victory.

Nobody’s claiming that this is VJ day. But it may be Midway. People celebrated that victory when they heard about it, even though they fully understood that the Japanese were not about to “capitulate.” Of course, back then people were less interested in seizing every possible excuse to piss in America’s Wheaties.