Post Zarqawi

I am glad that Zarqawi is dead. Truth be told, he was already irrelevant because his taste for sadistic violence had marginalized him, but it's good he won't be doing any more killing.

On the heels of his death Bush has now gone to Iraq, and once again I have to ask, what exactly are we doing there? We recall that the invasion was justified on the grounds of toppling Saddam, and getting the WMD's. All that was done in three weeks. Not only that, but by the end of the year, Saddam was in prison and his sons were dead, so there was no chance for a succession crisis.

Why are we there now? Basically, we are there to hold the "new Iraq" together. That could take a long, long time. Furthermore, that's not how the war was sold. Indeed, the war, as a war, is long over. If we are going to stay in Iraq as long as there is sectarian violence, then the odds are not only that we will be there for a long time, but we are allowing the violent Iraqis to control the time of our departure. Indeed, if I were an anti-American operative in the Arab (or Shi'ite) world, I would make sure that there was just enough violence to keep the US tied down -- forever. And I don't think it would take a lot of effort, either.

We no longer have the initiative, which, in battle, is fatal. In a counter-insurgency, where our motives for remaining are entirely about politics and saving face, the lack of initiative is perhaps not fatal but there is such a thing as death by a thousand cuts.