Pin the Tail on Zarqawi

The "Zarqawi" in the video does not speak Arabic with a Jordanian accent. His legs seem pretty normal. And crucially, he wears a golden ring, which for an authentic jihadi would be the ultimate affront. On the same day, June 22, of the release of the Kim video, "Zarqawi" also released a statement - but with a different voice, saying he was determined to "ignite a civil war between Sunnis and Shi'ites"..."Zarqawi's" voice can be heard for a few seconds - but the audio was taken from another tape released after Abu Ghraib when he was threatening Allawi's government. (From "Zarqawi - Bush's man for all seasons," Asia Times, October 15, 2004)

It seemed puzzling, too, given the destruction and the condition of the other five bodies, that Zarqawi's head and upper body - shown on televisions across the world - could have remained largely intact. (From "Riddle of how Zarqawi died," Sydney Morning Herald, June 12, 2006)

I have consistently stated that I consider the beliefs and tactics of Islamo-Fascists (call them "terrorists," "extremists," or what you will) to be morally unacceptable, politically bankrupt and counterproductive, based on a backward and hateful mentality concerning human rights and ethical responsibility, and so on and so on. Socialists should not, and need not, take the side of Al Qaeda, Baathism, or fundamentalism of any kind in current world events. I have no sympathy for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. But part of the problem is that we don't know who he was, and it's not altogether clear that he wasn't at least partially constructed by the United States; at the very least, his public meaning, the "text" of him, was very much a Western construct, created and perpetuated to justify the continued U.S. occupation.

(On the empirical question, it's important to remember that Zarqawi's entire existence in the occupation has been tainted with questions of whether he exists at all, particularly in the form and function attributed to him; fake letters, questions of whether he actually died years ago, and questions of exactly what role he really played in sectarian violence.)

At the very least, as Matthew Yglesias succinctly put it, "the whole Zarqawi phenomenon" was "the product of a bizarre collaboration between a Bush administration eager to identify an enemy in Iraq and a terrorist eager to overstate his own importance." Yglesias even goes so far as to call Zarqawi's death "apparent," which is appropriate, given that so many activities attributed to him were equally "apparent."

(For those conservatives and moderates out there who consider this kind of talk the hight of leftist reactionism and irresponsibility, remember that the U.S. pays foreign media to run fake stories. I'm as modernist as they come, but it's no exaggeration to say we don't know what's real over there!)

Zarqawi's "sociological existence", was also confirmed rhetorically by the mainstream U.S. media's response to Zarqawi's death. Response was jovial; orgasmic. I'll let Kate Randall and Barry Grey explain:

The exultation in the Islamist terrorist’s demise, replete with gruesome photos of the corpse plastered across newspapers and displayed on TV screens, takes on an almost ritualistic character...
“Gotcha!” was the front-page headline on Friday’s New York Post tabloid, atop a full-page photo of the dead man’s scarred face lying in a pool a blood. The newspaper’s inside headline read: “Evil Zarqawi Blown to Hell.”
The New York Daily News front page exclaimed “PICTURE PERFECT! Al Qaeda Terror Boss Blown Right to Hell.” Below was US soldier holding a large framed copy of the same photo...
This spectacle bespeaks both the mindset of the American ruling elite, and what it seeks to inculcate among the public at large. Terms that come to mind in regard to the outlook of the ruling establishment are “primitive,” “backward” and “self-delusionary.” It retains an almost childish belief that it can somehow extricate itself from the disaster it has created for itself in Iraq if only it can kill another 5,000, 10,000 or 100,000 people.
At the same time, it is driven by a need to brutalize and degrade public consciousness...The more obnoxious and heavy-handed their propaganda, the less real and lasting is its impact.
Most Americans...do not really believe that Zarqawi was the towering figure described by the government and the media. And in this their instincts are correct. His exploits, in fact, both real and apocryphal, played a negligible role in the growth of Iraqi resistance to the American invasion and military occupation. Any impact he did have was destructive of the resistance, since his deeply reactionary aim was to incite sectarian warfare between the Shiite majority and the Sunni minority.
Zarqawi was far more significant for the function he served as the latest devil incarnate conjured up by the US government and media to somehow justify the war. Unable to provide a coherent rationale for the war, the political establishment, Democratic as well as Republican, is perpetually looking to find—or manufacture—a new symbol of evil they can use to frighten and disorient the public.
Zarqawi had barely been dead a day when Bush administration and military officials began floating reports about his replacement. It appears at present that the new devil will be Abu al-Masri, reputed to be an Eqyptian-born associate of Zarqawi. The US Central Command already has a $50,000 bounty on al-Masri’s head.

There's more, of course. Michael Reagan joked on his radio show about Zarqawi "looking for the virgins" in heaven. Jay Leno told all kinds of jokes about the death. Such celebration deeply disturbed my friend Josh House, who seems to wish, not unreasonably, that we treat this alleged clash of civilizations as a struggle requiring the winning side to be genuinely ethical, genuinely above bloodlust and making light of any death and suffering whatsoever. He certainly has a point.

It's perfectly fine to feel satisfaction at the death of someone who kills other people, innocent people. It's equally fine, rational really, to take that satisfaction with a grain of salt, knowing that his death probably won't make things any "better," that is, probably won't contribute to the long-term stability of the communities of suffering, alienated human beings who have become pawns in the spats of the powerful. It's also perfectly rational, and perhaps morally and intellectually mandatory, to question the timing of all of this, to remember that the past several weeks have been very bad for the U.S. propaganda front, what with allegations of unprecedented civilian massacres and further revelations of corrupt wartime administration. One sees that the Zarqawi ritual was performed with exacting precision--the performance in Iraq, the predictable celebratory reaction back in the U.S.

Zarqawi's apparent life and apparent death are a powerful metaphor for the question of who gets to control reality; ownership of the means of reality-production, if you will...The important question is how we can produce the kind of reality that no longer rewards the commodification of life, and the ritualistic celebration of death.