Empty Victory

Jay Tea at Wizbang thinks that the Jordanian suicide bombings are an empty victory for al Qaeda and shows just how much damage the US has done to its command and control structure.

Muslims around the world are looking at Al Qaeda now, and not seeing noble warriors. They're not seeing liberators. They're not seeing fierce champions, standing up to the crusaders. They're seeing the mad dog they've been cheering on as it snaps at the West now turning on them. And those fine words of courage and resistance are now being heard as "the beatings will continue until morale improves."

Steven Den Beste says that this could be a symptom of just how much damage we have done to Al Qaeda, signs that they are dissolving into components and cells, their unifying structure gutted and shredded. I think he very well could be right.

The bombings in Jordan will, I believe, turn out to be the Pyrrhic victory that signifies the beginning of the end of Al Qaeda. And, as they fall further and further into disgrace, I hope others will begin turning on the Islamists, and we might actually see the beginning of a true "Reformation" among Islam.

This matches up with what I was saying yesterday.

Meanwhile, Daniel Benjamin thinks that the war in Iraq is spilling over to Jordan: They've bombed Amman. Where will the Iraqi insurgents strike next? The problem for Benjamin is that the Islamists were busy attacking targets throughout the Middle East well before the 2003 Iraq campaign. They included the attack on tourists in Luxor, and the multitude of attacks against Israel. There was even a major battle in Syria way back in the 1980s when the Islamists tried to stand up against Syria's Hafez Assed, who promptly crushed the Islamists and killed more than 25,000 in the city of Hama. Benjamin is trying to pin the blame on the current terrorism on the Iraq campaign, while discounting the fact that Islamic terrorism has been a common feature in the Middle East for more than a generation.

Even as Benjamin notes that Zarqawi is Jordanian by birth, and he exported his brand of Islamic fascism to Iraq at the behest of Osama bin Laden, he labels Zarqawi an insurgent. Zarqawi's presence in Iraq doesn't make Zarqawi an insurgent, but rather an international terrorist hellbent on spreading his nihlistic views.

Problem for Zarqawi is that he's not getting that many converts that stick around. His most loyal recruits have already gone to Hell in a fireball, and he's left with trying to coax his aides' families to blow themselves up. And the failure of Sajida Mubarak al-Rishawi to blow herself up is a failure on several levels. It can be spun to show that women simply can't do a man's job (suicide bomber). As a recruitment tool, a live suicide bomber isn't particularly useful. Suicide bombers are useful as a recruitment tool only when they're successful in killing others as well as themselves. al-Rishawi failed on that ground as well.

And you can be sure that she's giving up intel on Zarqawi's operations. That's going to hurt Zarqawi's operational capabilities in Jordan, and possibly in Iraq as all leads are going to be tracked down.

Zarqawi's interest in Jordan isn't new. Zarqawi has been busy trying to blow stuff up for years, and Iraq gave him the ability to do it on a wider scale, but that was only because he was released from Jordanian prison on an amnesty:

After King Hussein died in 1999, he was released in an amnesty, relocated to Pakistan, and soon worked on the millennium plot to blow up the Amman Radisson and kill visiting American Christians and Israelis at tourist sites. He made a point of staging one of his early Iraq bombings at the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad in 2003.

Revolving door justice has its blowback. In spades.

To recap, Zarqawi was released from prison in 1999 and then promptly became involved in a Millennium terrorist plot, began recruiting terrorists for his cause, and became heavily involved in the Iraq terror campaign by first staging operations out of the Jordanian embassy in 2003.

What does this show? Releasing terrorists back into the wild is ill-conceived and has terrible consequences for the world, not just the country that imprisoned said individuals. It shows the failure of the law enforcement meme to fighting terrorism. Some terrorists are unrepentant and cannot be allowed to ever see the outside of a prison cell.

So, next time that you hear some country being pressured into releasing captured terrorists or instigators of violence back into society on some confidence building measure or as part of an amnesty, think hard and long. The person that may be released today may be the mass murdering terrorist of tomorrow.

UPDATE:
Both Steven den Beste and Vodkapundit discuss the media and the arm of decision. The discussion centers on the media's role in promulgating the terrorists' goals, but simultaneously degrading the terrorists' ability to operate because as headline fatigue sets in, the terrorists are forced to take ever more radical action to maintain their headlines, which leads to further atrocities that repel potential recruits from joining their cause. It appears that we are witnessing this phenomenon take hold in Jordan as a result of the hotel bombings, which specifically targeted a westernized Muslim wedding party.

UPDATE:
Point Five has his own unique take on the situation. However, I think Dude Looks Like a Lady. Or vice-versa.

UPDATE:
Ace is reporting on the fact that one of the hotel suicide bombers may have been released by the US, although it's unclear whether it's simply another person with the same name.

U.S. forces detained and later released an Iraqi with a name that matched one of three suicide bombers who struck Amman hotels, killing 57 others, the U.S. military said Monday.

Jordanian authorities said Safaa Mohammed Ali, 23, was part of the al-Qaida in Iraq squad that bombed the Grand Hyatt, Radisson SAD and Day's Inn hotels on Wednesday.