Ladies and gentlemen…we got him. Again.

Disregard the fact that we had similar press conferences two years ago when we paraded Saddam Hussein’s face on CNN, beard full of maggots and debris. And definitely try to forget the fact that it was he that we started this war over in the first place.Or was it because of weapons of mass destruction? Well, they were never really clear on that, but I digress.

Because the Iraq War is now at an all time low, we decided to expend even more military funding towards intelligence, GPS satellite surveillance, and counter-terrorism units and eliminated Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of the Al-Qaeda cell and Sunni extremists in Iraq.

You might remember some of al-Zarqawi’s best work, including the televised decapitation of Wall Street Journalist Nick Berg and the bombing of several large Mosques in urban Iraqi neighborhoods to incite sectarian violence. He was a ruthless man who utilized violence for his cause and instilled fear on all sides, including even his most closest subordinates.

The Bush Administration is proclaiming this a great victory for democracy against terrorism (read: tyranny, neo-fascism, totalitarianism, etc). It’s about time good news came out of Mesopotamia; popularity of the war is at an all time low, and politicians are no longer debating strategies to win the war, but rather strategies to withdraw. It seems to be a lost cause, and the White House needs some good news. Two 500-lbs smart bombs usually does the trick.

But before we have a ticker-tape parade and kiss each other’s asses, lets assess the situation for a moment. While the word from DC indicates a success for President Bush and his War on Terror/Iraq, in my historically inclined mind I could not help but feel like I had seen this before. As I read the article, I saw it, face bloodied and bearded, eyes peacefully shut. And then I realized the memory the photographs were eliciting; somewhere among those complexly simple features of a dead person, I noticed a similar peace and resolve in another paraded dead bearded revolutionary: Che Guevara.

While Fox News praised a great victory for the “Coalition of the Willing”, I feared for the future. While they saw a future with American flags and a Freidman-esque flattened Middle East, I instead saw a different image: posters of al-Zarqawi’s face in the dorm rooms of American college students.

Guevara was much like al-Zarqawi, a revolutionary who embraced national sentiment to boldly defy the West, rallying the people and bringing hope to an otherwise bleak movement. His death in Bolivia was highly publicized, mostly to defame and bring down his otherwise-powerful image. But instead, Guevara became a legend, rising above a man to a legend that has even crossed the boundary into popular mainstream culture here in the United States. We display pictures of him on our walls and on t-shirts, but we don’t even know why. Who knows, maybe someday your kids will have lunch boxes with al-Zarqawi’s bandana-adorned head on it.

We didn’t eliminate a threat, we created a martyr.

According to a recent story in Time Magazine, little children in Iraq would play war in the street, and it was always the coolest, strongest one who got to play al-Zarqawi. He is idolized and respected, honored and desired. And with his death we have now exaggerated his legend and indirectly aided his cause. If we believed that we were eliminating the threat, we are blind to the real problems in Iraq. We are only scratching the surface of a momentous problem with a nail-file, stubborning pushing on a door that says pull.

Already, his successor in Iraq has been created, and many more are in place to succeed his successor. This is a problem that simply will not go away, like the scab on the top of your mouth that would heal only if you could stop tonguing it. Debate rages on in the senate on how to fix the problem, with even Democrats divided on whether it is even worth fixing an already burning house. This war is dividing not only our government, but the nation as well. Can our government survive the rifts created by partisan bickering?

The Bush Administration flaunted photographs of al-Zarqawi because they needed some good news to drown out the names of the US Servicemen killed every day, their names ever-so small and sadly insignificant among the day’s headlines in the New York Times. But this unfortunately is not good news. It only seems that way.

If the government wants to accomplish their goals in this war, they have to start by defining realistic, substantial goals and acting on them. Killing one man will not accomplish anything because the problems in Iraq cannot be attributed to an individual. To believe so is to display our immense ignorance for a thousand years of history and culture. Here’s a thought: instead of punishing the terrorists who strike at innocence in the name of God, why not attack why they are attacking in the first place. In less words, there are ways to defeat terrorism besides weapons; to unfortunately use a cliche, the pen is always mightier than the sword. But whatever we choose, we must be absolute in our resolve and concrete in our goals. How much longer can we half-heartedly pursue something we out to be doing right?

Zarqawi’s death should be relished only because a merciless killer got what he deserved. But do not be deceived into believing that anything has been resolved in the fertile crescent; that, unfortunately, will require more bloodshed.