Zarqawi

I will not say that the news of Abu Musab al Zarqawi's death is in any way bad, but I fear we will spend days, quite possibly months, listening to the administration crow about how effective the U.S. and Iraqi militaries are and what a red letter day this has been. I cannot get behind that kind of attitude.

Zarqawi's organization, not even named al Qaeda in Iraq until some months after its formation (until after he had communicated with bin Laden), was formed in order to fight the American and coalition forces in Iraq after the invasion. In short, while it seems we have not been doing much to get bin Laden of late—if we have, we are proving just how poor the same military that killed Zarqawi can be—we still took years to get Zarqawi, including one case in which the Iraqis had him in custody and released him.

Worse, we have to acknowledge that Zarqawi, who entered Iraq after the U.S. invation, wouldn't have had anything to organize against had the U.S. not chosen to make a detour into that country in order to find more interesting targets. We made Zarqawi, in effect. Yesterday's killing has reversed, in part, a Frankenstein's monster of our own creation, and good as that is, it would have been better had we never needed to do get rid of him in the first place.