Distracted

First of all, I apologize for the lack of blogging on my part over the past month or so. Finals, followed by starting two summer jobs, followed by moving to a new house, have kept me largely away from serious blogging for the most part. Unfortunately it doesn't look to get any better anytime soon, thanks to a confluence of two major sporting events, the appearance of the beloved Dallas Mavericks in the NBA Finals for the first time ever and the opening of the World Cup today in Germany. Between working, watching games, and watching games I've taped and will stay up too late to watch, I don't have a lot of free time for blogging or human social contact otherwise (except as incident to above mentioned game-watching.) Nonetheless, I do plan on fitting in an odd blog posting here and there, and resuming in full force next month. And on that note...

Though this qualifies as old news at this point, Zarqawi, terrorist master-mind and the head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, is dead. Initial reports indicated that he was killed in a bombing of his hide-out, leading me to believe he had been killed instantly. However, reports now indicate that he lived for at least a short time after the attack. To that I say...good.

I know that Zarqawi's death will do nothing substantial to ease the fighting in Iraq. As we've discussed here at our blog, divisions between the Sunni insurgents and the largely Arab jihadists have led them to openly fight with each other at times, and so it's safe to assume that Zarqawi's death will not undermine the Sunni insurgency in any significant way. But Zarqawi and his men were nonetheless responsible for hundreds of suicide bombings and thousands of Iraqi deaths during his campaign in Iraq, and Zarqawi deserved the death he had inflicted hundreds of times over. That he had time to realize that his death was imminent, that he was doomed, is only fitting. If anything it's the least he could have suffered before he died.

The real question now is what happens to Al-Qaeda in Iraq. To what extent was the organization a creation of Zarqawi, and how long and to what level of effectiveness will it survive his death? As of yet there are no real answers to this question. I suspect largely that it was Zarqawi's personal charisma and intelligence that held the organization, and with his death Al Qaeda will have trouble carrying out operations to the degree that they did. Again this will probably not impact significantly the sectarian violence between Shiites and Sunnis, but if it may mean a significant dent in the prevalence of suicide bombings, as it is believed most were committed by foreign jihadists working for Al Qaeda. Fortunately no one in the White House has been touting this as one of those corner-turning events, like the capture of Saddam, but perhaps opportunities do present themselves in the wake of his death, and the news is positive, even if it's significance is unknown at this time.

Nonetheless, the violence and our occupation continues.