Austin Bay Blog

A Creators Syndicate column, published at StrategyPage. (Realclearpolitics also has the new column on-line.)

Zarqawi’s death gives Iraq’s new Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki several political opportunities. The column discusses those opportunities–and points out this is a rare, positive media op for New Iraq.

Here’s one excerpt:

Maliki promised the Iraqi people he will improve the internal security situation. Beginning in late 2003, Zarqawi attempted to ignite a sectarian civil war between Iraqi Shias and Sunnis. Maliki can use Zarqawi’s death to help heal those sectarian rifts in Iraq.

Zarqawi’s death serves as an important media and political touchstone for the new Iraqi government. The successful counter-terror operation focused international press attention on the prime minister’s appointment of a new minister of defense, minister of interior and minister of national security. His cabinet is now complete.

Maliki must take further advantage of the moment..

The column goes on to describe what Maliki and his government could do. 

The column includes this memory of the war in Iraq (Z-Man is the nickname US troops gave Zarqawi):

The nickname Z-Man may suggest a Hollywood thriller with a conclusive chase scene. The hunt for al-Qaida’s Prince of Iraq, however, has been long, complex and frustrating. In 2004, when I served in Iraq, Z-Man topped Multi-National Corps-Iraq’s wanted list. One of the special operations liaison officers attached to Corps’ headquarters would greet me in the morning with a wry, “We were busy last night.” The special ops personnel stay busy — but hunting senior al-Qaida leaders ranked as the highest priority. The corps’ senior special ops liaison officer told me the week I left Iraq: “We’ll get Zarqawi, eventually. But it’s a hard, slow job finding one guy with the kind of protection he has. It’s not a Hollywood movie.”

The hard, slow work of collecting and analyzing intelligence leads might yield an ephemeral intelligence breakthrough, one requiring near-instantaneous rapid reaction in order to launch a successful strike on the terrorist and his cohorts.

Zarqawi evaded several close encounters of the lethal kind with Coalition special operations forces. This week, Z-Man’s luck ran out.

StrategyPage also has much more. “The war in Iraq is becoming more of a police operation.”  And see Claudia Rosett’s essay.

UPDATE: Prime Minister al-Maliki weighs in at The Washington Post.

Maliki’s lede:

The completion of the national unity government Thursday in Iraq marks the starting point for repaying Iraqis’ commitment to and thirst for democracy. We are at this juncture thanks to the bravery of the soldiers, police and citizens who have paid the highest price to give Iraq its freedom. Our national unity government will honor these sacrifices by pursuing an uncompromising agenda to deliver security and services to the Iraqi people and to combat rampant corruption.

This government will build on the additional momentum gained from the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in order to defeat terrorism and sectarianism and to deliver on the Iraqi people’s hope of a united, stable and prosperous democracy by following a three-pronged strategy:

We will draw on the country’s untapped workforce to kick-start extensive reconstruction, put into motion an initiative for genuine national reconciliation, and increase the intensity and efficacy of building the military and police…

It appears that Maliki is taking advantage of his opportunity. Good.

UPDATE 2: Maybe the great media swarm will give Iraq’s cultural revival some attention.

UPDATE 3: ABC News writes about “men in the shadows” hunting Zarqawi. The article points out that special ops does its own thing– often on the edge.

UPDATE 4: Techcentralstation has posted the new column.