Failure by coordinated terrorist act

I don't tend to read Instapundit that much because, well, he's pretty ideologically dissimilar to myself. Yeah, I'm kind of a philistine, always reading blogs I sort of agree with.

When I did check it out today, I was kind of surprised by his response to the recent coordinated strike on Shi'a in Iraq (and Pakistan, or maybe those aren't related). I think this has been a genuinely terrible event, not just because of the lives lost and the hundreds wounded, but because it suggests the future of Iraq is not anywhere near as sunny as Bremer, the Pentagon, and Bush would have one believe.

If this is the work of Zarqawi or other presumably Al Qaeda allied groups, this is probably the second most deadly act of Al Qaeda terror since September 11th, the most deadly being the Bali blasts. This suggests that Al Qaeda, or at least parts thereof, are still able to commit acts of obscene violence with coordination and success.

This act is intended to create sectarian unrest, to pit the Shi'a against the Sunni, to instigate a civil war. It remains to be seen if this will happen, but this sort of violence can only increase tensions in a country where religious divisions already complicate attempts to rebuild Iraq politically and structurally.

For Glenn Reynolds, in the wake of this terrible act, to suggest that this means "we're making progress" or that the Pakistan bombings won't "help their cause" is kind of bizarre. I imagine Reynolds thinks he's building the morale of soldier and blog-jockey alike, but this sounds like the tortured reasoning behind the flypaper theory of several months ago. Sure, blowing people up alienates a lot of people from your message, but if it inspires retaliatory Shi'ite on Sunni violence, begetting more and more violence until the US turns tail and Iraq erupts into a bloody civil war, is that progress?

I've never been in a war. I've never been in a civil war. But it seems to me that chaos and civil war, even in a majority-Shi'ite country like Iraq, serves the interests of Al Qaeda just fine. A civil war, and, again, I've never been in one so I'm sure I'm pretty full of it, drives ordinary people toward the kind of absolute thinking that defines these Wahhabist fanatics. Thus, more martyrs for the cause.

It's nice that Glenn, unlike many people, sees Al Qaeda as susceptible to failing through their own mistakes as opposed to, say, only military action. But I'm pretty sure this particular series of bombings and mortar attacks represents a failure on their part. I'm just a moderately well-informed, moderately well-educated schmoe, but I think this is more likely to cause problems for the US and a future Iraqi democracy than for Al Qaeda.

In semi-related news, this Calpundit post suggests that Bush was in the position to, erm, terminate Ansar Al Islam leader Zarqawi in 2002, but decided against it. Now, I wasn't in the room with Bush, so I can't say, yeah, Bush screwed up by not going after a known associate of Al Qaeda who was, yes, brewing ricin in a weapons lab in Northern Iraq (Which was, yes, not under the control of Saddam at the time), but it certainly seems like some of the post-"Mission Accomplished" violence could have been avoided in this way.