Would that it had happened in 2003. (See below the fold)

Leaving aside such transcendent luminaries of political horror as Hitler and Stalin, it is hard to imagine a more well-deserved exit from this mortal coil than Zarqawi's.

Let us hope that his death does provide a turning point in Iraq, for the sake of Iraqis, and for the sake of our national solvency and the lives and limbs of our soldiers who are over there.

I have no doubts that Zarqawi has responsibility for some of the more gruesome violence unleashed in Iraq, and it is probable that the Iraqis who fingered him, likely Sunni participants in the insurgency, though that is pure speculation, were finally fed up with Zarqawi's use of Iraqis as human fodder in that wider clash of civilizations that is as surely the goal of Al Queda as it appears to be the goal of American neo-cons and the Bush administration, which has carried out that neo-con foreign policy with such devotion.

No, the above paragraph does not translate into saying Bush equals Zarqawi, or any other kind of moral equivalence.

It is a simple statement of fact.

The key question raised by that fact is why on earth Bush et al thought it was a good idea to put American foreign policy in service to the primary worldwide goal of Bin Ladin by putting the Cheney-Bush thumb squarely on that side of the scale of asymmetrical warfare occupied by Al Queda, raising Bin Ladin et al to the level of a world-wide threat, against whom we are in a state of perpetual war, essentially without end, because that end cannot be defined by any particular goals.

The response of the media, so far, is a muted version of their response to every other turning point in this war-filled occupation, kudos for the administration, speculation on the potential for a political plus for the president and war supporters, with approving nods to Bush & Co's sober recognition that the road ahead is still difficult and probably filled with dead bodies.

As I recall, such warnings accompanied all such turning points; even after Saddam was arrested, the administration was saying some of the same things.

I'm glad Zarqawi was taken out from the air in a military operation, although his apprehension would have been better for Iraqis and for us, were this not the Bush administration. Since it is, Zarqawi apprehended would probably have disappeared into into some secret black hole, there to be tortured to the point that he couldn't have been tried before the bar of justice, Iraqi or American, nor would we ever know for sure, since Bush and the top level of his entire administration are such instinctive liars, if Zarqawi had given up any genuinely helpful intelligence.

Better this way.

Eric Alterman remembers the "might-have-been" if Zarqawi had been taken out before our invasion of Iraq, uncovered by MSNBC. Go read it here