Zarqawi/Synecdoche

Who was Zarqawi? He was a synecdoche invented by the U.S. in order to simplify a very complex situation. Zarqawi was our bad guy, the one who wore (literally) a black hat (ok, kafiya). At the ground level he was a little more bloodthirsty and a little more vicious than your average jahidist. And he liked the spotlight. So the United States gave it to him in the expectation that they would reap a great victory in the “War on Terror” by killing “the most powerful terrorist in Iraq” (quoting Bush).

But guess what? Just as Zarqawi was a synecdoche, this great victory of ours is a metonym. We effected Zarqawi’s fame and killed him making him even more famous. Then we declare victory in a War that cannot be won because it is not a war and use his death to withdraw American troops as the mess we made in Iraq gets worse now that bin Ladin’s more tactical people have an opportunity to fill Zarqawi’s void (recall bin Laden has been trying to moderate Zarqawi’s behavior as of late).

Having biked this morning through Near-Flatville to Almost-as-Flatville, I can assure you that American flags are out in full force today. Those scholars who think we have gotten beyond the “great man” as the locus of history will be chagrinned to find that the American people are so badly educated that they are only capable of thinking in terms of “great men.” Thus Bush has defeated Zarqawi. America has won! His death serves as a metonym for Bush’s policy from the perspective of Republican pollsters and as a synecdoche of Bush’s policy for those of us opposed to it from the beginning.