Strategery After Zarqawi

With Zarqawi dead the pundits are all looking ahead, divining the future from the ruins of the terrorist’s hideout.

Our lefty friends are not impressed. According to Ben Johnson they see his death as

A “transparent psychological operations campaign run out of the Pentagon”; “a double tragedy”; “part of a larger and tragic story of miscalculation”; a possible fraud; a conspiracy; not “moral”; an “obscene spectacle”; no “big deal”; and good cause to beat a hasty retreat.

Hmm. That certainly is a point of view, but I’d advise our Democratic friends not to get too carried away by such talk.

Blogger Austin Bay ties the victory back to President Bush’s “forward strategy of freedom” and the year 1950 when President Truman had set up the strategy of containment for fighting the Cold War. Truman did not win the Cold War, but he set the strategic direction for the United States that subsequent presidents all more or less followed, beginning with President Eisenhower.

In April 1950, the "unpopular" Truman administration produced NSC-68, a strategic study that shaped U.S. foreign policy for five decades. In 1953, the Eisenhower administration "tested" NSC-68 with a secret analysis commissioned by President Eisenhower (the Solarium project). The Eisenhower group ratified NSC-68's basic containment strategy.

And “faster please” Michael Ledeen ties everything back to Iran. After praising the operation that involved the “great performance of our Special Forces and the active cooperation of Sunni tribal leaders in the Anbar Province, plus the Jordanians, plus the various party leaders in Baghdad” he goes on to identify Zarqawi, the man who fanned conflict between Shia and Sunni, as a tool of the Iranian mullahcracy.

Despite his intonations against the Shiites, and his manifest efforts to promote civil war in Iraq, Zarqawi was happy to work with the radical Shiite regime in Tehran, and they were happy to work with him. It is quite wrong to view him as a leader of one faction in a religious war; his promotion of religious conflict was simply a tactic designed to destabilize Iraq and drive out the Coalition.

This ties back to the basic strategic proposition for invading Iraq: to have a platform for operations against Iran, the real strategic problem in the Middle East. However much of a mess Iraq may be it is still a strategic block against Iranian expansionism.

There is another side to the Middle East conflict. It is described by Jay Nordlinger at the World Economic Forum in Sharm El Sheikh. Says Prime Minister Aziz of Pakistan: “Globalization is a tidal wave: You can either ride it, and go far; or resist it, and be swept away.” Or there is Prime Minister Nazif of Egypt, who

is presiding over what everyone sees as Egypt’s economic opening: Tariffs, taxes, regulations, and other barriers are falling. Foreign investment is pouring in, and the economy is growing at 6 percent.

The Middle East is not all terrorism and beheadings. It is a climactic war between the western civilized team, the realm of trust, exchange, and transparency, and the “eternal gang of ruthless men.”