June 9, 2006

• This Just In:

  Iraq hails killing of Zarqawi as start of new era
  Fri Jun 9, 2006 7:21am ET

  
  

  By Omar al-Ibadi and Ibon Villelabeitia

  
  

   BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is a “new beginning” for Iraq, the interior minister said on Friday, but authorities imposed a traffic ban in an apparent effort to prevent al Qaeda reprisal attacks.

  
  

  The ban in Baghdad and in the town of Baquba, near where U.S. planes killed the most wanted man in Iraq on Wednesday, will last from 11 a.m. (0700 GMT) until 3 p.m., when Iraqis go to mosques for Friday prayers, the Interior Ministry said.

  
  

  Suicide car bombers launched by Zarqawi have attacked Shi’ite mosques in the past as part of a campaign to plunge Iraq into sectarian civil war. The traffic ban suggested authorities feared more such attacks on Friday.

  
  

  Fugitive Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar vowed that the killing of Zarqawi would not weaken Muslim efforts against “crusader forces”, a Pakistani report said.

  
  

  In a strike that President George W. Bush said could help to turn the tide against the insurgency, two U.S. 500-pound (227 kg) bombs killed Zarqawi in a rural area near Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, on Wednesday.

  
  

  Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani told Iraqiya state television: “Killing Zarqawi is a new beginning for Iraqi security and establishing peace between the different components of society.”

  
  

  But U.S. officials, struggling to defeat an insurgency that has sown mayhem in Iraq with car bombs, beheadings and kidnappings in the three years since the U.S. invasion, have warned against expectations of an quick end to violence.

  
  

  
  

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  Another Terrorist leader has been killed. (The antichrist) Bush declares another major U.S. victory. “The tide has turned”, at least for the time being. Has the majority of Americans realized that the U.S. never should have invaded Iraq in the first place? There is still a rift in the country with about half the populace decrying what they consider an insane occupation in a country around the world which has always had secular problems, and half still praise the U.S. invasion and occupation as a needed deterrent to the world domination by terrorists. I am still reading editorials which state that there is no comparison to be made between today’s war in Iraq and the war in Vietnam which occured during my youth. Those comparisons will be easier to spot, I’m afraid, once the Bush administration resumes the draft, and this will happen, no matter how many lies they tell to the contrary, when enough American youths have been slaughtered in the name of peace and freedom.

  
  

  How many is enough? This is the question weighing heavily on my soul as I read the news of Zarqawi’s death. I remember the supposed jubilation and reports that the tide had turned after the capture of Saddam and the killing of Uday and Qusay, his two sons. Common sense tells me that in a country where the Shiites and the Sunnis, two warring and opposing factions of the Islamic faith, think nothing about decreasing their numbers through violence and killing, no amount of dead terrorist leaders is going to matter in the long run. Somebody else will take the mantle of the leader, and the insurgency will continue, possibly worse than ever before. I read recently in an L.a. Times story that in May the amount of Iraqis killed in roadside bombings and insurgent attacks is the largest number since the beginning of the “war”.  We must remember, as with Vietnam, that the U.S. has never declared war on anyone, so even the “honor” associated with battle is not present, and both these warring factions in Iraq, not to mention other less popular groups, still consider that the U.S., an infidel Western nation (which seems to bully it’s way into every world situation at once) is in the country illegally, and is causing more problems than it is solving.

  
  

  Ask the typical American soldier, 19 years old, fresh out of high school, feeling his hormones and his angst like never before, full of spit and vinegar, if he is fighting for right, and he will tell you that he is indeed fighting the good fight. So were my generation’s youths thinking when they got sent to Vietnam. By the time the American students who were being sent to the slaughterhouse realized that there was a no win situation in the offing, over 14,000 soldiers had been killed. A little more than a third of that number have already been slaughtered “fighting the good fight” in Iraq in the last three years. We don’t have the draft yet. So students aren’t being picked willy nilly from their high school campuses to be fitted for a uniform.

  
  

  But how long before this happens? And when it does, will the American students rise up, as they did in 1967 and 1968, declaring that they would not help their government engage in a needless war that was doing nothing more than serving as a killing field for American youth? And if the students rise up, and protest, will they eventually be gunned down as they were in Ohio in 1970?

  
  

  So Zarqawi is dead. Immediately I thought of the fact that everytime we see one of those videos filmed by terrorists, even back in the early 70s, the terrorists always have their faces covered. The Islamic radicals who feel as if they are buying a swift ticket to Paradise (complete with the requisite number of virgins) if they give up their lives for their good fight, are for the most part faceless. The terrorist could be sitting next to you on the bus right before it explodes. Or in the next seat at the restaurant. They don’t need “leaders”. They believe that Allah is their leader. Bush and the administration needs “leaders” on which they can pin the sins of the war, so that when those “leaders” are killed, the tide can turn again, and the media can lie with a straight face that we are “ahead” again in the war on terrorism.

  
  

  I read back in the 70s that the 21st century would be an “age of terrorism”, and that no country would be spared the inequities of this new type of warfare. Just recently, a terrorist cell was found in Toronto, Canada. The Canadian government didn’t even join America in the “coalition” back in 2003, and Canadians are certainly not known as bullies of the world. Terrorism can strike anywhere. Anytime. The individual ideas that foster terrorist acitivity can be different and multitudinous. Everybody seems to have a beef with something. Give him access to a gun or a bomb and he’ll  tear off on a rampage. Students shoot up their classrooms. Seemingly sedate and friendly families are shot up by their patriarchs. Anybody with a complaint about their workplace can arm themselves and clock out for the last time, taking a few fellow employees with them.

  
  

  Do I have the answers? No. I worry that conditions are worsening however. I don’t think that America’s involvement in the Iraqi “war” is positive for our country. I believe we’ve dug ourselves so deep into this pile of circumstance that it is not going to be easy to extricate ourselves. And I fear the reinstatement of the draft. I think this will stir the country into a worse stew than during Vietnam. The protesters during Vietnam had ideals and were protesting for a cause. I’m afraid the young person today doesn’t have that cause. He is confused. He doesn’t know what is right or wrong.

  
  

  I think about gang violence, and mafia retributions, and an eye for an eye. Somewhere along the way, tolerance and understanding, if they ever existed in the first place, and I am beginning to doubt it, have given way to fear and reprisal. Everytime one guy is offed, another on the other side has to be killed to even the score.

  
  

  And the score will just keep getting larger and larger, until we have all killed ourselves. I remember when a friend and I went out to the Palm Springs desert during the 70s. He was teaching me to shoot with a .22 rifle. Our targets were beer cans and squirrels. I actually did pretty good, and I liked the feel of shooting a gun. I’ve never picked up another, however, because I told my friend then, and I still believe this. I can get angry very quickly, and I liked the feel of shooting a gun. Those two feelings are mutually exclusive. I don’t want to put myself in a situation where I would have a gun lying around when I got angry. So that was the only time I’ve ever shot a gun. Is the answer gun control? I don’t know. Seems that the more restrictions you put on people, the more they are apt to rebel. If they have access to firepower, that’s even worse.

  
  

  I’ll tell you one thing. No matter how much America tries to establish “democracy” in a place like the Middle East, it will fail. Two sides who will never back down in their convictions will never compromise. The end will never be pretty, becuase nothing will ever end. Zarqawi will be replaced. The “war” will continue. American youths will die, as will thousands of Iraqi citizens. Either we will pull out unequivicably, or else we will see so many of our children die that we will have to institute a draft in order to refill the ranks.

  
  

  Then all hell is going to break loose. 

  
  

  Michael F. Nyiri, poet, philosopher,fool 6/9/06: 7:12am pdt

  
  

   An Iraqi citizen shoots his gun into the air as a sign of jubilation that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been killed. Lots of Iraqis shoot guns into the air, not seeming to care where the bullets eventually land.

  • 10:08 am
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