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Originally Posted by Ranchlander
Alot of new leaders may want to step up and take his place, but they won't be very qualified. From what I've heard Zarqawi was a mastermind at rallying support and planning terrorist operations. You can't teach that to a youngster.
This was a big coup for the states and the western world.
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You're absolutely right--and I doubt if anybody thinks that killing Zarqawi means nothing at all. But it is important to remember that there's more than one insurgency out there--there's a foreign-based Islamist insurgency, and that has probably taken a pretty big hit, though there will presumably be a slight uptick in insurgent attacks in the short term, as a response. In the long term, there's probably going to be something of a power vacuum.
There's also an Iraqi Sunni insurgency, and there are Shia militants too. Zarqawi was, as I understand it, widely hated in Iraq, but especially among Shias, on whom he had declared a jihad. However, my sense is that homegrown militants on both sides will probably not be affected very much.
On the other hand, ridding the world of somebody like Zarqawi is something of an end in itself, regardless of its strategic importance.
