Victories

Today the Senate rejected repealing the Paris Hilton tax, with the cloture vote losing by a mere 3 votes. Also today, the FDA approved the HPV vaccine, the virus that leads to cervical cancer. These are big victories. Should the Democrats take back the House, we would see victory translated as less rejecting stupid proposals and more as providing legislation that leads to progress for the American people. On the HPV virus, which Christian conservatives didn't want approved because they said it would encourage promiscuity (so we'll sacrifice millions of women's death so they won't have sex, which they will already), this is the kind of common sense that the American people surely want.

And today, it was announced that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in Iraq. These are all victories, and I applaud the work of the armed forces on this one. However, I hope it's not hyped into "the end of the insurgency" which is most definitely is not. The Washington Post reported months ago that Zarqawi was essentially a small player in Iraq used by the US military to put a face on the insurgency.

The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents and officers familiar with the program. The effort has raised his profile in a way that some military intelligence officials believe may have overstated his importance and helped the Bush administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The documents state that the U.S. campaign aims to turn Iraqis against Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, by playing on their perceived dislike of foreigners. U.S. authorities claim some success with that effort, noting that some tribal Iraqi insurgents have attacked Zarqawi loyalists.

For the past two years, U.S. military leaders have been using Iraqi media and other outlets in Baghdad to publicize Zarqawi's role in the insurgency. The documents explicitly list the "U.S. Home Audience" as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign.

In a sense you can see the death of Zarqawi as the US slaying their own myth. This occurred on a day when, minutes later, 30 more were killed as violence continued. We should be very circumspect about this. I'm not saying Zarqawi wasn't a terrorist, but he wasn't the leader we made him out to be.