A great piece on why Zarqawi’s death matters, by Christopher Hitchens, concluding with this astute observation:

If we had withdrawn from Iraq already, as the “peace” movement has been demanding, then one of the most revolting criminals of all time would have been able to claim that he forced us to do it. That would have catapulted Iraq into Stone Age collapse and instated a psychopathic killer as the greatest Muslim soldier since Saladin. As it is, the man is ignominiously dead and his dirty connections a lot closer to being fully exposed. This seems like a good day’s work to me.

The cut-and-run crowd has wasted no time mobilizing their spokesmen of negativity; I turned on CNN a little while ago and who did they pick to comment on Zarqawi’s death? The poster boy for cut-and-run, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA). And on the very day US forces targeted and killed Al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, Murtha said to Wolf Blitzer, “I think we cannot win this.”