Why killing Zarqawi may make things worse

The folks at Americablog are pondering [1] the immediate effects if Zarqawi’s death turns out to be true.

If Zarqawi is such a big deal, then it's great that we got him. But I can't help but feel a nagging "so what" in my gut, at least as it concerns the situation in Iraq. In a month, I fear things are going to be just as bad as ever, and the public will quickly forget the "victory" over Zarqawi just as the capture of Saddam didn't change much either.

However, the problem with terrorism as we are experiencing it is that our enemy is not an organized state from which power emerges from a single locus. Rather, it is a radically individualized movement full of mini-leaders, self-starting cells, and zealous lone gunmen. The killing of a supposed leader does nothing whatsoever to affect the actual power base any more than the ousting of Hussein did to affect the threat posed by Iraq.

Bottom line is that these aren't governments we’re dealing with. In traditional warfare, you may reasonably target the enemy’s power locus (their government) since this is the entity responsible for directing the country’s assets against you. If you manage to take them out, the threat will generally stop since the prime motivator has been eliminated. However, terrorism functions as a populist movement where the power derives from the bottom. There is no single government but rather hundreds or maybe thousands of tiny governments and the power in this case is no more Zarqawi than it is any other zealous individual motivated to strike US interests.

I think it is infinitely more likely is that Zarqawi’s death will further inflame US hatred and that somebody even more vicious will rise to take his place. In fact, this may be the best possible outcome since it is far more likely that 3 or 4 individuals will view for power, each seeking to run their own ops campaign to prove their abilities. Absent Zarqawi’s leadership, whatever form of "command" he had over his followers has now been abruptly splintered and the US will probably have to face a more diffuse level of aggression from a group that was once concentrated.