Zarqawi Finally Making A Difference

Despite the defeatism clung to blindly and maniacally by Donks like Jane Harman (who evidently knows that her chances of chairing House Intelligence next year if her party regains the majority are dead if she doesn't don the tinfoil hat - which negates the chances of her party regaining the majority, but work with me here...), the snuffing of the "Emir of Mesopotamia" is, indeed, a crucial and far-ranging victory in the GWOT:

The death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi could mark a turning point for al-Qaeda and the global jihadist movement, according to terrorism analysts and intelligence officials. ...

Some European and Arab intelligence officials said they had seen signs before Zarqawi's death that the number of foreign fighters going to Iraq was already waning. For recruitment efforts, the importance of Zarqawi's death "cannot be overestimated," Germany's foreign intelligence chief, Ernst Uhrlau, told the Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel.

Guido Steinberg, an expert on Islamic radicalism at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin, said other groups of foreign fighters that kept a loose alliance with Zarqawi, such as Ansar al-Sunna, might turn away from al-Qaeda in Iraq now that he is gone.

"It's a great loss for the these jihadi networks," said Steinberg, who served as a counterterrorism adviser to Gerhard Schroeder when he was chancellor of Germany. "I don't think there is any person in Iraq able to control this network the way Zarqawi did. It's very decentralized. He was the only person in Iraq who could provide the glue.

"By losing Zarqawi, they run the danger of losing Iraq as a battlefield to the nationalist insurgents and others who aren't interested in bin Laden or the global jihad."

And the "nationalist insurgency" died off a long time ago, absorbed into the new political edifice of Iraqi democracy. The al Qaeda invasion, its strategic viability also long since vanished, will now have even its nuisance value bled off into irrelevance, and for one simple reason grounded in Arab/Muslim culture: Zarqawi lost. He didn't go out in a blaze of glory; he didn't even take any infidels with him. Instead, he perished in hiding, cowering in a safe (though not safe enough, it seems) house with his Western magazines and leopard-skin teddy (no joke) at the hands, and long arms, of the Great Satan. The untouchable (as long as he had the teddy on, anyway), invincible jihadi kingpin became touchable, vincible, and ignominiously dead in a fraction of a second, a flash, and a roar. In a culture as front-running as that one, how eager are aspiring holy warriors going to be to follow in those footsteps?

In war it's all about will, first and foremost. Taking out Zarqawi is a blow to the enemy's will and a boon to our own, under such relentless and vicious turncoat assault on a daily basis. The former is further bolstered by Iraq's own national security advisor, Mowaffak al-Rubaie:

[T]he medium-term effect of the departure and the death of Zarqawi is going to be huge on this organization, and not only on this organization, but on other groups, insurgent groups if you like. Because those people were reluctant and afraid, from Zarqawi, to join the political process. Now, the road is easy to go and to come back to the political process and to join the Iraqi people, and I believe this is going to encourage a lot of people from the insurgents, the nationalists, the former regime elements, Baathists, (inaudible) and religious extremists, they're going to start joining the political process and joining the new Iraq.

[W]e found a lot of material in that place. We found the diaries. We found telephone numbers. We found computers, and we found - there was a database in that computer. And there was a lot of information carrying - Zarqawi used to carry with him. So it was very, very useful, not only to capture Zarqawi and get him out of the way of the Iraqi people, because he's the number one enemy of the Iraqi people, it was the value of the information we got with him.

And that's what I was referring to when I said we have done a lot of raids immediately after we got Zarqawi....

I believe by the end of the year, of this year, I believe that the number of the multinational forces will be probably less than 100,000 in this country. And by the end of next year, most of the multinational forces will have gone home. And by middle of 2008, we will not see a lot of visibility, neither in the cities or in the towns of the multinational forces.

But, of course, President Bush still "doesn't have a plan." And when the above unfolds right on schedule, and just in time for the 2008 presidential campaign, it'll be just another Bush "plot" cooked up by Dick Cheney in Halliburton's basement to "steal" another national election.

As to the DisLoyalists' assault on our own will and morale, its latest primary vehicle is already starting to lose its lugnuts - or, as Brother Hinderaker summarizes:

As a story about the Marines, the jury is out on Haditha. As a story about journalism, it's starting to look bad for Time. Based on recent history, I suppose that means the magazine is likely to get a Pulitzer.

Ouch.

A crying shame, too, for Iowahawk is far more deserving....

UPDATE: The American Thinker contects the dots of the Haditha Hoax.