We love to have villains in the United States. Seriously, name one classic action or science fiction movie that doesn't have a sinister figure lurking in the shadows, making the audience gasp until his death brings about the turning of the tide, the triumph of the hero and the end of the battle.
This works great in the movies. By offering an embodiment of evil for the hero to combat, a convenient deus ex machina can always advance the plot toward a happy ending.
Life outside of the theater offers an entirely different reality.
The death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been trumpeted as much as any to come out of Iraq in recent memory. This event has been spun as a cause for celebration, as a monumental achievement in the war against terror. Headlines have praised the fall of al-Zarqawi as the end of the reign of a psychopath in the Middle East.
And the reasoning for doing so isn't so far-fetched, is it? Al-Zarqawi has been trumpeted more than any other man aside from Osama Bin Laden himself as the most brutal, dastardly and vicious of all the terrorists in the world.
It seems that in much the same way that Hitler is associated with Nazi Germany and Stalin's name is inseparable from the brutal oppression within the Soviet Union, al-Zarqawi and Bin Laden have come to represent a global network of violent terrorists.
Unlike Germany and the Soviet Union, however, the terrorist forces of the world do not pledge allegiance to their mortal leaders. They are not conscripting within a nation's army, but within a holy one fighting a battle of ideals.
Al-Zarqawi was not just responsible for being the head of Al-Qaeda, but was listed by many as the head of the Sunni insurgency within Iraq's borders. It would be nice to think that the death of one man could bring about the end of the current situation in Iraq - that perhaps now that the terrorist forces have lost one of their great leaders, they will lose all direction and the war will be one step closer to being over.
In the short term, it would appear that al-Zarqawi's death is already serving to unify Iraq. Soon after his death was announced, two cabinet positions within Iraq's new government were filled, after they had been debated on for a month. The positions were ministers of defense and of the interior - two of the most important positions in any government, especially in turbulent Iraq.
Despite the current jubilation, in reality, the impact of al-Zarqawi's death will take a long time to reveal itself.
After all, if a general in the United States' military were killed, would our enemies expect us to falter and fade away?
In the case of al-Zarqawi, for all we know, there could be dozens of equally brutal men waiting to take the reins of the remnants of his terrorist command.
Unless we find a way to prevent or alleviate the situations that allow terrorist groups to continually recruit new members, killing al-Zarqawi may only serve to give us a new head of al-Qaeda to focus on while the murderous insurgency continues.
We simply cannot associate one man with a global network. Our world is not a stage.
Ben Horowitz is a journalism senior. Reach him at Benjamin.horowitz@asu.edu.
