The man whose wedding party was bombed by al Qaeda in November says that the air strike that killed al Qaeda mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was "heavenly justice."
Ashraf al-Akhras lost his father and both his new in-laws in the attack in Amman, Jordan, an event that brought almost all Jordan's people to denounce Zarqawi and his terrorist network."Time may heal something simple, but what happened to us was big," he said. "I don't remember it as my wedding day, it's a day in which the eyes of Amman turned black and cried. "I can't describe how I feel," he said, tears in his eyes.
The slackening of the appeal of radicalized, violent Islam will almost certainly be accelerated by Zarqawi's death.
"Maybe this will signal the start of the road to safety for our brothers in Iraq," said Akhras, a Muslim who had no time for Zarqawi's radicalism. "We pray to God that such people wake up and go back to the true religion."
I have said before (and I am pretty sure I was one of the early ones to say so) that the heart of the terrorist war was the literal and ideological war within Islam.
But how can Muslims make war on other Muslims when it is prohibited in the Quran? The same way that Christians in Europe killed one another over religion during the religious internecine wars of Europe that occurred regularly from the 16th to 17th centuries. If you see yourself as the defenders of the true faith, then you exclude from the faith the other side. ...
As I pointed out in August 2002, the Muslim world is faced with defining what Islam really is. If al Qaeda is not in fact the keeper of the true faith, then the rest of the Muslims must unite to destroy al Qaeda just to ensure the survival of Islam itself. They need to understand that the present crisis is not primarily that of Islamists against the West, it is the Islamists against everybody who does not toe their line.
Austin bay points out the utopian character of hardline Islamist, including al Qaeda and Arabian Salafism, quoting accused alleged terror conspirator Zakaria Amara:
“I hate flags. I hate countries… I hate man made laws…. I hate nationalism with a passion… I love for the Sake of Allah and I hate for his sake…… When the islamic [rule] comes back… there will be no palisitne flag, no philipino flag… no pakistani, somali, american, or british flag… it will just be 1 flag,” he wrote, using the pseudonym “Aleph,” the first letter of the Arabic alphabet. He then posted an image of Arabic script followed by an English translation: “THERE IS NO GOD BUT ALLAH AND MUHAMMAD IS HIS FINAL MESSENGER…”
In religious terms, this is a religion of "realized eschatology," that by acting as if the utopian state can be significantly achieved in this present time, then the day will come, fairly soon, when the utopia will be entirely realized, an accomplishment that they view as certain anyway. Hence, the point of al Qaeda's terrorism, and of their allied groups, is to put them on the right side of history, to borrow a Marxist term. They understand that one way or another, the dar al Islam will ultimately triumph over the dar al harb: Islam will reign supreme over infidels. They seek, first, to be true Muslims and second, to help history move toward that triumph.
Their willingness to wage jihad against the infidels, especially giving their lives to do so, is how they cement their place as keepers and defenders of the faith. This faithfulness is not intended to make Allah suddenly, personally strike his enemies dead, but to make Islamist victory inevitable. Why? Because when they order their lives according to Islamic dicta (as they propound it), the flow of human affairs will naturally lead to Islamic triumph. That’s the way Allah has ordered the world.
But this belief is dependent upon a few things, not least of which is that Islam is actually the one true faith in all the world. It depends on their presuppositions that America is weak and weak willed. It depends on the Muslim ummah really wanting to see Islamism established across all the Arab lands, and that the ummah are willing to side with Islamists to make it so.
All these things are highly problematic. However concrete al Qaeda’s ultimate goals may appear, achieving them rests on a serious sense of self delusion and premises that are far from certain.
The death of Zarqawi does nothing to make Islamism's vision of utopia appear more likely in the eyes of the hundreds of millions of Muslims who are sitting on the fence, waiting to see which side to step off to. If al Qaeda et. al. really are the keepers of the true faith of Islam, as they insist they are, then it's reasonable for other Muslims to ask just when Allah will finally get in the game.
I think that more and more Muslims will decide that Ashraf al-Akhras is right: Allah is in the game, but not on al Qaeda's side.
cross-posted at DonaldSensing.com
Update: According to Major General William Caldwell, a member of Zarqawi's own al Qaeda in Iraq ratted him out by naming Zarqawi's spiritual advisor, who was painstakingly tracked until Coalition commanders were certain he was visiting Zarqawi last night. This betrayal from within al Qaeda's own ranks, even if for bounty, buttresses my point, I think, that the religious appeal of violent, utopian Islamism is losing its charm.
"Allah is in the game, but not on al Qaeda's side." Please don't forget the other side of the equation - namely, Satan is in the game on America's side. That is the excuse which will be made.
The point that the Jihadist are trying to "imminentize the escaton" (i.e., create a utopian reality within history) is also made by Laurent Muraviec of the Hudson Institute. His article is a must read, in my opinion...
Noah, thank you for the link to that superb article.
I recommend also (if I may be so bold), my own essay, The Forever Jihad, which deals with a related theme.
Imminentize the escaton, I have not seen that phrase since I read Eric Voegelin back in college.
Matt
I can't think of a better rationale for the use of force than the death of Zarqawi, who will not live to become another Yassir Arafat, eventually earning a fawning eulogy from the New York Times for decades of disrupting the peace.
Except that the New York Times probably has a fawning eulogy planned for tomorrow. They're still mad because we made fun of his video.
If anybody who ever voted for Pete Stark can read this - why, I'm surprised that you can read.
Well of course Satan is on our team. I mean, have you seen the guy's batting average? Fight record isn't so hot, but anyone who watched that South Park episode knows that he threw the match with Jesus anyway.
Can't beat the deal, either. All we have to do is keep sending him the Baalite scum who cloak their human sacrifices to fire-mawed powers in the name of the one true G-d, and are lawfully his by right anyway (enjoy the Z-man, big guy!).
That, and play lots of heavy metal in the clubhouse. Works for me....
The realized eschatology is a most dangerous meme. I've seen traces of it in all sorts of religious/ideological fanaticism, and it's almost scary. It's that sort of ideas that can make someone let the nukes fly.
I fear that this attitude, on the part of what is possibly a minority of Islam, will send many of them to wherever they are going a lot sooner than they expect - and the ashes of their burning shall poison the soil on which they lived.
I fear it, not because I fear the destruction of Islam - after all, it is the most violent and destructive creed ever to infect the mind of humanity - but because of its effect on the people who will be doing the destroying. The, largely Christian, West has as its basis the idea of freedom and tolerance - what will killing half a billion people do to its soul?
Ian - if it comes to the Christian west killing a half a billion Muslims, we will get over it.
I would suspect that our souls are quite a bit more resilliant than you might think at first. Especially when the choices given are "Convert to Islam or die"
That is the choice being given to us by the terrorists. And frankly, it's a choice that I reject.
I don't think that any rational American enjoys killing. But if I must kill to keep my family safe, I can accept it. In a perfect world, people would live and let live. However, we don't live in a perfect world, and if my hand is forced, the knowledge that my loved ones are safe because I destroyed those who would attack them would let me sleep at night.
On a somewhat side note, I had not realized that Zarqawi had lived a life of petty crime, alcohol use, thuggery and rape before seing the Islamist light in prison. He is perhaps then another example of an extremist driven to jihad and hopeful martydom by his inability to reconcile his past shortcomings with the fear of judgment.
If that S.O.B. was afraid of judgment before....
There are a couple of clowns commenting over at Drezner complaining that we didnt capture Zarqawi instead of kill him, and save the civilians in the house. I got a feeling there will be more of this nonsensical second guessing in coming days. For the record i think it was exactly the right thing to do to take out the slippery bastard the moment the opportunity popped up. The monster had escaped too many traps in the past.
There were reports that we'd gotten the leads that let us follow Zarqawi around for weeks or months. If we could capture him alive and debrief him before he died, that would be a plus.
I don't see this as a complaint. It would have been a fine thing to do if the experts on the spot thought it was doable. No doubt they had good reason to choose otherwise.
Exactly. The guys that got him were a special forces unit specifically tasked to get him. Capturing Zarqawu would have been a major coup and of course these guys would have done so had it been a slam dunk. But if there was any chance he could have escaped again, killing him as rapidly as possible was the wisest thing to do. At the bottom of that line of thought has to be the assumption that either our SF guys are stupid or bloodthirsty killers.
As an ex-TACAIR guy, all I can say is "Rock On!" to the studly pilot who can now say, "I killed Zarqawi." The gods smiled upon him.
Apparently, he didn't even take in his wingman; who was plugged into the C-130 at the time.
So he gets to roll in solo, pick up a building likely illuminated by a SPECOPS team, and drop a pair in the basket. "Two Paveway GBU500's for ya Z-man!"
Now THAT'S a Fitrep bullet. Imagine, "So Captain - how have you contributed to the War on Terror?" It's not as impressive as being an ace, but in this day and age, it's probably as close as a Falcon driver is going to get.
Lucky bastard!
"I don't see this as a complaint. It would have been a fine thing to do if the experts on the spot thought it was doable. No doubt they had good reason to choose otherwise."
In a word, 'lawfare'. After the spectacle the US has witnessed of various political groups rallying to defend Islamists, and after the difficulty they've had in obtaining a guilty verdict in what would appear to be clear cut cases, the US simply had no intention of capturing him alive. The value of the intelligence Zarqawi could provide was deemed inferior to the damage he could cause as a 'political prisoner' and allowed to grand-stand in front of a media all too willing to be manipulated by him. Heck, can you imagine the global appeal on this self-admitted mass murder's behalf had the US tried him and sentences him to a justly deserved death penalty? There would have been mass rallies by liberals and Islamists on his behalf, and his death would have been a true occassion for terrorism. We would have made real martyr of him, and not merely a soldier that embarassingly and shamefully got himself killed by the same enemies he had boastfully insulted.
I'll go one further. I would say that it's reasonable to assume that verbal instructions were given to the effect of making sure he was not taken alive. That is what I would have done at least, and I've said as much in other posts. Unfortunately, we appear to have bungled that aspect, as word has now leaked out - as it most assuredly shouldn't have - that he was in fact alive after the bombing and died of injuries. Hense, the left will get to have a field day with theories of whether we helped him exit this world, as if helping Zarqawi to exit this world is something we ought to be ashamed of.
Exactly, celebrim, on several occasions it has been pointed out to those who have demanded extraordinary judicial process for terrorists that the result of their demands would be a reluctance to capture alive and a resulting increase in deaths.
I don't know that that was indeed the motivation here, but it could have been a factor.
Um, Ian, where is there any suggestion that the Christian West would kill half a billion people?
Dr. Elshtain's "just war" theory is the basis for the need to kill at all right now, that is, where failing to do so will cause the death of many more. But it is puerile to posit that the radical Islamist movements, as opposed to the large majority of Muslims who wish the nuts would just go away, means that you need to kill them all. These "brave" souls who hide behind women and strap bomb belts on brainwashed young boys (who are dreaming of 72 virgins) while avoiding the front lines themselves, are not going to add to their followers as long as the current pace of "justice" is retained.
When the payoff slows and stops, the masses look for a new model. The question is whether the US population, egged on by the "loyal"(sic) opposition and the MSM (hmm- is there a difference between those two?) has the attention span to follow through on something that takes some resources and lasts longer than two weeks to get the war to that point.
It is questionable whether the combination of real war, a rich and spoiled population egged on by demagogic politicians, and 24 hour "star scoop"-driven "you are there" news is compatible with winning any war that isn't played on an X-box.
Celebrim, if we were even a little bit cynical, we could advocate catching Zarqawi, debriefing him, and then perhaps kill him and plant the body in a recently bombed site.
But that aside, I have another speculation why not to capture him. The story (which might be completely false, of course) is that al qaeda gave him up to us because he'd become a liability to them. If it was you making the choice, would you send a bunch of special forces into a site that al qaeda told you to? Say there were three tons of explosives in the basement, and maybe mines at other important spots -- likely helicopter landing sites, traffic bottlenecks for ground vehicles, etc. They blow our guys up with or without Zarqawi. If they announce Zarqawi is dead they have a great story to tell about his martyrdom.
So we dropped bombs instead. No real downside unless it turns out an important iraqi politician's family is living there. Not much risk to US troops. If we get him, great. If we don't get him we can deny everything.
Better to debrief him if we could, but if we bomb we don't have to trust al qaeda to tell us the truth. The benefits aren't worth the risk.
If we captured Zarqawi, how would we debrief him? Information from waterboarding was in style when the 9/11 commission relied upon it, but is it today?
The story (which might be completely false, of course) is that al qaeda gave him up to us because he'd become a liability to them.
I think that's military disinformation. An insider that was close enough to track his movements could just as easily have "stuck" the pig. And if they were that close they would have to know the U.S. penchant for long-range bombing of their prey. And we don't know what kind of intelligence we got off the carcasses, so this event could end up taking out even more of the national operation. It would almost be the kind of rash/ risky move that Zarquawi was being criticized for.
If we captured Zarqawi, how would we debrief him?
I would think that braggarts like the late Mr Zarqawi are among the easiest to break by trained flattery.
The Washington Post is reporting that Zarkman** was alive when Team Satan (our guys) arrived.
** I guess this means the end of Iowahawk's hilarious Zarkman series. A small price to pay . . .
Then again, maybe not . . .
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/
I think that's military disinformation.
Sure, but there's a slippery slope there. Once we think our military is spreading disinformation to keep the public dumb and happy, why would we believe anything they say?
"Sure, but there's a slippery slope there. Once we think our military is spreading disinformation to keep the public dumb and happy, why would we believe anything they say?"
I'm not sure that the implication was the the public was the target of the disinformation. If we hadn't got inside information, getting Al-Queda to believe that we had recieved information from a highly placed source would be highly disruptive to thier attempts to regroup after their leadership losses. At best, it could cause Al Queda cells to turn against each other.
Why would you imagine that the public would be the target of a military disinformation campaign? I doubt the American public care one way or another how we got him, just that we got him. It's Al Queda that has to care how we got Zarqawi.
Incidently, I don't believe that this is part of a US disinformation campaign on the grounds that the US is horrible at propaganda warfare, especially propaganda based off disinformation. The US has never been able to pull it off successfully in the past, and thier is no reason to believe that they would be any more successful now.
Celebrim,
While I have a great deal of respect for your intelligence based on many of your previous posts, the US has, in the past, pulled off severla very important "dis-information" campaigns.
1) D-Day, June 6, 1944: Many of the Germans (including Adolf Hitler) had been convinced that the REAL invasion was to take place at Pas de Calais, based upon their own vanity and massive amounts of dis-information.
2) During the run up to Operation Desert Storm, plans were made to make an amphibious landing in Kuwait. The Marine command never intended on following through on this, because they thought that the tactical gains wouldn't warrant the causalties expected. The Iraqis in Kuwait, however, took this "flank" into account and expected and amphibious attack, until it never happened.
3) GHW Bush threatened the use of US "weapons of mass destruction" if chemical weapons, et cetera, were used against coalition in 1991. Later, he said no operational plans were ever made to use them, and the US had no plans to use them regardless of Iraq's (Saddam's) actions.
Just my two cents.
In response to #20 from J Thomas:
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htmurph/articles/20060607.aspx
"June 7, 2006: ...Zarqawi's recent audio messages have not only attacked the U.S. and the Shia-dominated government in Iraq, but also Iran. He's even claiming that the U.S., Iran, and Shia in general, are in cahoots to destroy Islam...
Given that Zarqawi has become a loose cannon and that his actions are handicapping Al Qaeda's efforts, it seems reasonable to expect that an accident may befall him at some point in the near future."
Jim C, your quote implies that al qaeda had an incentive to get rid of Zarqawi. I agree, it seems plausible.
I was looking at reasons not to try to capture him.
And one very plausible reason is the general problem of capturing a suicide bomber.
"We have him surrounded, there's no possible way he can get away, sir."
"Follow the plan. Move in slow and careful. Detain any civilian you find, we'll sort them out later. As we get the inner cordon set up, maintain both outer ones."
"Sir, they found him, he's holed up just where the bad guys said he'd be."
They listen. "YOU ARE SURROUNDED. YOU ARE OUTNUMBERED A HUNDRED TO ONE. THERE IS NO ESCAPE."
"You think he'll surrender or try to fight?"
BOOOOOOOM