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June 15, 2006
"What kind of people loot dirt?"
George Will has offered perhaps the best obit for Zarqawi I've yet seen. What a strange hybrid of the modern and medieval worlds was that man. He made very effective use of the possibilities offered by modern media technology. And navigated the threat posed by modern military technology equally well: it might not be an exaggeration to say that in this sense Zarqawi was the most saavy prey the US military has ever pursued. No cheap bin Laden "I'm gonna hunker down in some cave last inhabited by Australopithecus" out: Zarqawi lived large and flambotantly, travelling in our midst throughout the Sunni triangle and beyond. Indeed, in his capacity to evade a sophisticated, technogically advanced dragnet while remaining an active terrorist, he exceeded even "The Engineer". All the predator drones in the world could not, at least for a time, provide an answer to his crude car bombs or the dull knives with which he beheaded people because he was always two clever steps ahead of our gizmos and toys. And yet all of this in the service of a nihilistic, tribal and medieval zero-sum-game outlook. Had we in the West not decided at some point at least to try to outgrow this outlook (Zarqawi is both a creature from a contemporary (in the sense that it is happening in the midst of the modern world) reality we cannot understand and an echo of who we once were), we would still be confronted with the meager prospects offered by life in the 11th century. And that is all Zarqawi can offer Iraq at the end of the day.
Posted by dag at June 15, 2006 3:33 PM