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Let's get one thing straight to start with - Zarqawi was scum, human filth and absolutely one of the nastiest examples of human depravity in recent memory. And I do not see one iota of condemnation in this article about this, no mention of his personal snuff videos, barely more than a mention that he thought the Shia were heretics and deserving of slaughter and just a small note that his "followers" killed 60 at weddings in a Jordon hotel. But as usual in one of P Coles rants - "it's all Bush's fault"
I find the historical narration to be someone selective too - since it seems to omit the small but salient fact that the Sharif of Mecca got his ass run out of Arabia after the Saud family took over and the British installed his 2 sons as the Kings of TransJordan and of Iraq. Maybe the omission was made is because a lot of the Salafist ideology that form the core of nut cases like Zarqawi came out of the Wahabi fueled "revolt" that tossed the Hashemites out of the Hejaz.
Zarqawi was never really "admired" by the Iraqis either - he was just viewed as "the enemy of my enemy". He was also someone the Sunnis in Iraqi could count on to recruit and deploy a line of brain dead suicide bombers (preferably not Iraqi) to keep up the pressure on the Americans or those uppity Shiites in Iraq that actually wanted to exercise their majority status in the country. I find it telling that the word "betrayed" was used to describe the person that gave Zarqawi's location away - one might consider that person to be a hero in most circles.
But let's get to the main point here - ALL of the rulers in the Middle East are in a quandary over the idea of democratic elections where you actually do not know who will win in advance. That was the idea of Iraq - to shake the foundations of these societies so that the current "rulers" learn to respect the populations will instead of dictating it. Islamic fundamentalism will pay a part in this change - since it is part of the local culture - the trick is to let it run its course and show it has no better answers than any other philosophy for running a state. The radicals were there before Bush and will be afterward - but in Professor Coles' fairy land - it's got to be all the USA's fault.