A Pilgrim’s Digression

Every time a new Bin Laden audio tape surfaces, he is always portrayed as “desperate” for relevance. We’ve got him “on the run” or he “sounds weak and tired.”

Never mind that this is a man who has eluded us for four years, but who still has the resources to make press releases.

Now we have the Zarqawi video [Zarqawi Taunts U.S. In Video], and we are hearing the same kinds of wishful thinking. He’s “desperate” to prove he is still relevant; or he realizes the insurgency has lost. Or as an Iraqi aide to PM Jafari said, “Now [Zarqawi and his terrorists] have seen that the government has broken the deadlock, they are feeling this might be the last chance they have to survive.”

Spare me. I’ve heard it all before. Every milestone, every election, we have been treated to the same wishful thinking: this election, this milestone, will break the back of the insurgency.

Call me defeatist if you want, but I am tired of the wishful thinking. That’s all we have now: wishful thinking. No plan, no more money for reconstruction, just the fervant wish that the Iraqis will get their act together and that the insurgency will just evaporate like a bad dream, so we can get the hell out of that snake pit.

The Zarqawi video is interesting on a number of levels, mostly for its details, not for what Zarqawi says. In terms of what he does say, he also engages in a bit of wishful thinking when he says that American troops aren’t willing to fight and that they take drugs and commit suicide. There are a small number of troops who are drug addicted, and there have been suicides, but that’s really irrelevant and means nothing, in terms of whether we are “losing” the war against the insurgency.

What is more interesting to me is that Zarqawi does not wear a mask. Apparently, he considers it pointless, since his face is already known. However, that may prove a mistake, since now American soldiers looking for him have a more recent portrait.

Zarqawi looks fat and healthy. His face is chubby and tanned. He hasn’t been spending any time in a spider hole.

Also, I haven’t heard this remarked upon, but in the scenes in which Zarqawi is holding or firing a rifle, the rifle looks like an American rifle, possibly even an M4. I’m no expert; however, it certainly is not the standard issue terrorist Kalishnikov.

Zarqawi may wish to prove that he is still a factor in the insurgency, but I would not get my hopes up that this means the insurgency is on its last legs or anything, as Dick Cheney has so often repeatedly told us.

What it does mean is that like a gopher, Zarqawi has stuck his head out of his hole for the first time since 2003. This is our chance to whack him, if we can. It’s a good chance, too. I won’t be surprised if this video results in his capture or death in the next few weeks or months.

But maybe that is just wishful thinking as well.