Zarqawi's Dead. So What?
Topic: Iraq
With the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi the U.S. and the Iraqis are left with some important questions. What does this mean for peace in Iraq? What does this mean for the U.S. occupation of Iraq? With there be any affect on the level of violence in Iraq? What does the future hold?

The answers to these questions depend upon your perspective.

The first thing that we need to do in order to adequately answer these questions is ask who was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The answer is important so that we not only "know our enemy" but so that we can head off future Zarqawis. Finding an answer to this question is not that easy as there are many contradictory sources but one source that gives good background information is "Who is Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi?". Basically, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was a terrorist whose affect in Iraq has been incredibly exaggerated by the Bush administration and the right-wing, for-profit media. Al-Zarqawi was the leader of a small faction of Islamist extremists who, after the invasion and occupation of Iraq by U.S. forces, was elevated to a position of increased credibility in the previously isolated minority Muslim extremists.

Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi elevation to the point of ineffectual figure-head was cemented when President George W. Bush gave Islamist extremist the wet dream they've not only prophesized but needed to sustain their cause. In the post-invasion occupation men like Zarqawi moved into Iraq to fight Americans face-to-face. When Bush convinced U.S. citizens that Iraq was involved with the attack on 9/11, that they represented a direct and imminent threat to the U.S., and that Iraq was a part of the ambiguous "war on terror" which is without duration, without a defined goal or enemy and can be used to subjectively justify the attack of a country that did not pose a threat to their direct neighbors, no less the U.S., he opened up a Pandora's box, which if you're a Muslim sitting in an oil-rich Muslim country is reminiscent of the crusades.

Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi moved into Iraq and made it his new hunting ground with his sole purpose to foment sectarian violence between the Sunnis (Zarqawi was a Sunni) and Shia Muslims so that the occupying U.S. forces would not succeed in their mission of securing Iraqi natural resource assets. The problem with his policy and tactics is that many native Iraqi Sunnis, who were already fighting against U.S. forces prior to Zarqawi's arrival and prominence in Iraq, did not want to fight with other Iraqi Muslims (Shia) but rather seek to work together in violently removing U.S. occupying forces from their sovereign land.

Zarqawi represented such a small minority presence in Iraq of foreign born fighters that without tacit Bush administration and right-wing media support in elevating his prominence he surely would have faded into obscurity brought upon by the overwhelming occurrence of murdered civilians, maimed soldiers and general chaos in which he did not direct or inspire. It should also be said that U.S. ignorance of Iraqi culture has played a huge part in perpetuating Zarqawi's small role in Iraq. Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was, from the perspective of the Bush administration's power people who exploited our widespread Iraqi cultural ignorance, the much needed figure-head and more importantly, foreign-born terrorist, to justify the existence of the flawed policy of preemptive action against weak Muslim countries; to give Americans something to soothe their need for vengeance. The problem is that we are imposing American values on an Iraqi problem. Zarqawi was not the head of the Iraqi insurgency which even if he was, doesn't need a head to continue, as it will indefinitely, well after Zarqawi's death.

The irony of the situation is that the Bush administration's explicit reasons for invading Iraq was to fight the "war on terror" to do away with men like Zarqawi who didn't previously exist in Iraq but with the U.S. invasion and the fallaciously created image of his preeminence, his death will certainly inspire more just like him.