Three Cheers for the Death of Zarqawi

Visiting the folks here in Mississippi, we've all been watching Fox News every waking minute for the last two days. The Iraq War hadn't been very interesting to Fox News programmers for quite some time--nothing but Duke Rape and Ashlee Holloway for weeks--but with Zarqawi's death there's been something to cheer about and therefore something to cover. They've hardly even gone to commercial, it seems. O'Reilly devoted his entire show last night to excoriating liberals for their insufficient enthusiasm about Zarqawi's death. Contra O'Reilly, I'm thrilled about this news. Let me chime in with three cheers of my own.

1. Zarqawi was responsible for the deaths of hundreds and perhaps thousands of civilians, a brutal killer. He has been a scourge of the Iraqi people, and his death can only be good news for them.

2. Zarqawi was profoundly illiberal--theocratic and sectarian. Nothing tolerant about that man. No separation of church and state for him. No liberal worthy of the name could feel any sorrow that such a man would be defeated in his political goals.

3. His death will deprive the Bush administration and its defenders of their favored narrative: the insurgency is largely due to the presence of foreign fighters and terrorists. Zarqawi was always blown completely out of proportion by these guys, often referred to as the leader of the insurgency. He was the figure they used to personalize "the enemy" and to characterize all opposition to the US presence in Iraq. Now that he's gone, perhaps official rhetoric will soon begin to grapple with the reality of what we have wrought in Iraq--a fractured society divided along ethnic & religious lines. Zarqawi was just one (vicious) player in this chaotic power vacuum we've created.