Community

I do not usually rejoice at any death. This person was known to be causing mayhem and death. It is nice to know that he will not be causing any more of those.

Above all, this could potentially have saved countless innocent Iraqi deaths. Good news for the Iraqis.

BTW, I just checked (9:50am cst) NYTimes, and they do have the news with a picture.

I had searched on their site, as well as through Google, and it wasn't up yet.

Being as I had heard it on the radio at 6am, it seems funny that they would be so slow to get it up?

I am mixed on this.

My preference would be that he is captured so that a) he is NOT martyed and b) he might inadvertantly give some vital information up.

But it would be more difficult to mount a scoop operation than an airstrike, and if its a question of hitting him or letting him go, I say hit him.

But just as George Bush said this morning, this is something to be approached cautiously. There is no telling whether Zarkawi's martyrdom will add more converts, or whether his successor will be more ruthless or successful than him.

James

This probably will add more converts, but the presence or absence of leadership is quite important. In the absence of a good leadership (or perceived leadership), any new converts' impacts are going to fizzle out soon, unless a far good leader emerges from the new converts.

Its a very human trait we have of personalizing things down to "evil" individuals. Hitler was one man, it took a huge organization to do the holocaust and there were many individuals in that group who no doubt would have done it with or without Hitler. Hitler didn't attend the Wannsee conference where the "final solution" was planned.

From my readings, I understand that Al Qeada is not a strict hierarchical type organization. Its quite possible that though Zaqawi was the "leader" in Iraq, he may not have been personally directing all the attacks or even setting policies. It may get worse, it may get better, I hope for the latter.

James

At one time you could slay the beast by removing its' head. With the way Al Qaeda is organised- at least as much as we know- is that the loss of a single leader doesn't slow much down. There are other cells, other leaders. Replacing him might take a day. More likely, there is a disaster plan already in place.

The way that I visualise Al Qaeda is more like a hydra- a multiple headed beast that simply grows two new heads when one is removed.

I wish I knew what the answer is. What seems to be evident is that there are going to continue to be those who believe that the best course of action is terrorism.

I am no expert on terrorism or human psychology :-)
But sometimes we do give too much credit to certain things.
Will this single action wipe out all terrorism, obviously not. Yes there will be new leaders in the future causing destruction and spreading terror.

But when we remove the air from a balloon,it takes sometime to fill the balloon back in. Meanwhile...we can accomplish some more things.