But today, with the death of al-Zarqawi and what will likely be largely the dissolution of his insurgency, they've found another. Reuters does it thus (emphasis inserted):
The killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi removes the man who took Iraq's insurgency to new heights of savagery but it also creates a martyr whose inspiration will mobilize new recruits.
So we dust off the SWNIDish scorn and say that al-Zarqawi will be as much a martyr as Uday and Qusay were when US forces put their insides on the outside. Martyrs aren't insurgency leaders who lose. They're principled individuals who refuse to forsake a cause even when captured and challenged with the threat of death to forsake the cause. Like the seven sons of 2 Maccabees 7. Or Stephen. Or Polycarp. Or Jesus (for whom, we hasten to add, martyrdom is a partially useful but wholly inadequate category of description).
We doubt that the picture of al-Zarqawi's corpse will inspire anyone in the Middle East who isn't already committed whole-hog to Islamofascism (sorry, but we love that ironic turn of cliche). Further, we believe that his death will discourage several who were previously so devoted, with a net loss to the bad guys.
Then, when you subtract the direct loss of personnel today and the prospective losses effected in today's raids by capturing massive numbers of documents, computers, PDAs and cell phones, the remainder means a really, really bad day for the Muslim gangsters.
John Dillinger did not become a martyr. None of the guys memorialized here did either. So it will be for the guy killed today.
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