Christopher Hitchens on “Why Zarqawi’s death matters”:
If we had withdrawn from Iraq already, as the "peace" movement has been demanding, then one of the most revolting criminals of all time would have been able to claim that he forced us to do it. That would have catapulted Iraq into Stone Age collapse and instated a psychopathic killer as the greatest Muslim soldier since Saladin. As it is, the man is ignominiously dead and his dirty connections a lot closer to being fully exposed. This seems like a good day's work to me.This may seem off the subject, but there’s a song I like by Graham Parker (off his masterpiece “Struck by Lightning”) called “Children and Dogs”:
Children and dogs will always winHere’s my point: there’s a fundamental, karmic pleasure to be found when the good are rewarded and the evil are punished. Nobody is claiming the violence in Iraq will cease tomorrow and all this euphoric “tipping point” chatter will fade in a couple of days. But for now we can take a moment and enjoy the fact that a murderous psychopath is gone. Even better than that time they dragged Khalid Sheik Mohammad out of bed.
Everyone knows that
2 comments:
there’s a fundamental, karmic pleasure to be found when the good are rewarded and the evil are punished. Nobody is claiming the violence in Iraq will cease tomorrow and all this euphoric “tipping point” chatter will fade in a couple of days. But for now we can take a moment and enjoy the fact that a murderous psychopath is gone.
Man, you can be one pithy bastard, you know that?
I couldn't share your impulse more. I wish your words could be embossed in gold print on about 10,000 cinderblocks, which would then be dropped on the heads of the nevershutup people who will spend the next week asserting that:
a) This is a totally unimportant detail;
b) This is a crucially important transformative moment;
c) This must be a real bad day for those liberals;
d) This is a suspiciously convenient distraction for those conservatives.
Fine, so there wouldn't be an insurgency to have to defeat, if not for Bush's original call and the tunnel vision planning. But this guy Zarqawi was a scurvy creep before the occupation, he was a scurvy creep during the occupation, and now he won't be anything after it. Scumbag in a bodybag.
Let's hope that this saves at least one Marine we'll never know about. And that each of Zarqawi's 72 virgins are enjoying their individual 1/72nd-size chunk of him tonight.
Des,
About five seconds after I hit "publish" I thought to myself: "What mawkish crap." But it was late and I had no energy left to fix it.
But, yeah, let's keep perspective here. It's kind of a bummer that the more substantial news about the Iraqi government finding defense and interior ministers (to, you know, take over security) was overshadowed by Zarqawi.
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