Killing them with laughter

Well, it's about freaking time.

The brainiacs in the Pentagon have finally figured out that the best way to weaken the leadership of al Qaeda and other terrorist "organizations" is not to promote these men as formidable masterminds, responsible for so many dasterdly deeds that they would have to be present everywhere, all the time. We've been doing that with Zarqawi since the beginning of the Iraq war, and doing it so effectively, we might as well have set up a recruiting office for him in Times Square. At long last, the military has realized that maybe that isn't such a good idea. Instead, they've realized the best way to marginalize and weaken Zarqawi is to make him an object of ridicule.

In one scene, Mr. Zarqawi, the most wanted terrorist in Iraq, appears flummoxed that his American-made M-249 machine gun will not fire fully automatically. Off camera, one aide is heard ordering another, "Go help the sheik." A man walks over and fiddles with the weapon so Mr. Zarqawi can fire it in bursts.Another sequence shows Mr. Zarqawi handing the weapon off to other aides and striding away, revealing white jogging shoes beneath his black guerrilla attire. One insurgent later appears to grab the machine gun absent-mindedly by its scalding-hot barrel and drop it.

[...]

"What you saw on the Internet was what he wanted the world to see," General Lynch said. "Look at me, I'm a capable leader of a capable organization, and we are indeed declaring war against democracy inside of Iraq, and we're going to establish an Islamic caliphate."

"What he didn't show you were the clips that I showed, wearing New Balance sneakers with his uniform, surrounded by supposedly competent subordinates who grab the hot barrel of a just-fired machine gun," he said.

Ooh. Snap. New Balance?

The administration used Zarqawi as the missing link between Iraq and al Qaeda before the war, going so far as to cynically pass up a chance to kill or capture him. Then they used him as the face of "foreign jihadists," cynically refusing to admit that the insurgency is primarily led by Iraqi Sunnis. Maybe now they're figuring out that using him is less effective than marginalizing him.

In any case, laughter seems a better tactic in the war against islamomoozlumfascistnazis that what we've been doing heretofore. It does have a long, successful history.