An Internet hub with domestic and international news, analysis, original reporting, and popular features from the left, center, indies, centrists, moderates, and right
Zarqawi’s Death: On The Utility Of Force
Oxblog’s Patrick Porter raises the issue:
THE UTILITY OF FORCE? How useful is killing single figureheads when fighting a complex insurgency?This recurrent question has sharpened with today’s news that Zarqawi is dead. It is tempting to assume, as some commentators do, that this falls into a futile and self-propelling cycle of violence.
Read the rest to find out the rest.
2 Responses to “Zarqawi’s Death: On The Utility Of Force”
The car bombing attacks, especially the bombing of the Golden Mosque has opened up the rifts between Sunnis and Shiites. It will be difficult to put this genie back in the bottle. Yet there is a possibility that Iraqis can pull back from the brink, but I am not optimistic. In the mean time Afghanistan is beginning to see a resurgence of the Taliban, it will be an even more daunting task to put that country back together [if it was ever truly together in the first place]. So much for nation building in the Arab world.
This strategy has proved effective for Israel. Sure, the hydra grows another head, but the new head is rarely as effective as the old one, and there is a time of calm while the new head grows.