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.

The rebirth of surrealism?

Okay... I didn't have the theological backup I said I did. I think Orcinus has a pretty good one, you could check that.

I just wanted to talk about some spiced ham. You know, the Hormel product, popular in Hawaii?

Every day I get loads of junk in my yahoo bulk mailbox. I almost never check it... but I just recently did. As everyone knows, there's a great deal of material encouraging one to purchase, er, V.I. aghhhura. or C.ialis or whatever. But I was somewhat unprepared for some of the contents of these emails. Apparently much of this content is done to fool junk filters, but in a ny case it's rather fascinating. Here's a snippet from an email I recently received:

"Then the third rat gets up and says, "Later guys, I'm off home to harass the cat."
Two neighbors had been fighting each other for nigh on four decades. Bob buys a Great Dane and teaches it to use the bathroom in Bill's yard. For one whole year Bill ignores the dog.
Automatically Vera pressed the trigger"

And:

"If you do not wish to be protomagnesium :-)
Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies....
The tallest trees are most in the power of the winds, and ambitious men of the blasts of fortune."

And:

"Buenos noches!
It is the privilege of those who fear love to murder those who do not fear it!"

And:

"If you do not wish to be fuliginosity ;-)
I feel bad that I don't feel worse....
Acts of kindness may soon be forgotten, but the memory of an offense remains."

And:

"Hej.
Modesty is the chastity of merit, the virginity of noble souls....
-----
If you do not wish to be choanosome ;)
You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist....
Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction. [Isaiah 48:10]"

And that's just the weiner pills. It doesn't take into account all the pron links written by such luminaries as Neolithic C. Improves, Baghdad O. Sufficient, and Whale F. Insinuates.

The question is not "what does all this mean?" because it doesn't mean anything, it's word salad. The question is, why would this word salad be so fasinating, so genuinely bizarre? The fact is that, to me, the juxtoposition of such disparate elements is surreal in the classic sense, but it is a surrealism born not of dreams and free association but of software, of algorithms. It shows me that a non-human agent can create something compelling despite being so far from passing the Turing test that using the word intelligence to describe it is absurd.