How Important Is Zarqawi?

Nate links to the WaPost article about the US overestimation of Zarqawi.

I'm willing to believe this is a possibility if we capture/kill Zarqawi and the insurgency continues to rage. But until this happens, I defer to conventional wisdom and my own intuition that this piece of shit is of primary importance.

Look...say it is true that Zarqawi is overestimated and that the insurgency is really all about Iraqi nationalism/sectarianism...then why is it so frigging hard to capture and kill the guy? Shouldn't the Iraqis want him dead just as much as the Americans? And then why isn't he?

No, the fact is, Zarqawi and his foreign fighters have been the ideological, spiritual vanguard of the insurgency from the beginning. Their dedication to chaos, mayham, attacking Americans, Iraqis, mosques, recruiting centers, etc. reek of Jihadist/Al Queda mixed with Zarqawi's peculiar savage thuggery, of chopping off heads and so forth. They are not controlled by other agents. Their agenda does not change and attracts fanatics to their cause.

If there were no Zarqawi (and no ample replacement found) fomenting anti-American attacks and civil war, Al Queda would become a weaker horse. Fascists don't go for the weak horses, and their influence would wane in Iraq. This wouldn't cause all things to get better in Iraq magically. But it's like getting rid of that annoying player on a fucked up team - a step in the right direction - than can have untold reverberent effects in the GOOD direction.

One thing these terrorists understand is the power of symbols. They are not like the communist revolutionaries who sought to destroy the west by force, taking over institutions and so forth. 9/11, while being strategically successful, was even more successful as a symbol, a symbol that the West was indeed vulnerable and weak, a premise that terrorists barely believed themselves, I think, prior to 9/11.

We need to fight symbols with symbols. One of few options in this symbolic war is to capture leaders who have become symbols of the Islamicist/Terrorist Cause. Zarqawi has put himself into this position and we need to capitalize on it. Same with OBL and Zawahiri.