Memo to Zarqawi: "You're killing me man..."

That was the gist of today's column by Ralph Peters. Peters, a former military intelligence officer and novelist, is an interesting read on the GWOT. "Interesting" meaning honest; he praises the Administration when he thinks they're getting it right and he criticises when he thinks they're wrong, as I've heard him do in several radio interviews in the last year.

So World Terrorist No. 1 sent a message to Regional Terrorist No. 1: We're losing. We need a different strategy.

How so? Peters makes the case that the continued killing of Iraqi's by terrorists is pushing all the wrong buttons in the all-important battle for hearts and minds.

Osama wants Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to shift his sights from Iraq's population, to help carry the struggle back to American soil. With the old order beginning to crack in the wake of Iraq's elections, bin Laden sees that his last, desperate hope is to hurt America so badly that we quit the fight.

Zarqawi is a hit man. He thinks tactically. Faced with the humiliation of 8 million Iraqis defying his threats and lining up to vote, his instinctive response is to lash out, to punish, to kill without stopping. Monday's bombing in Hilla took 115 Iraqi lives. It was a classic Zarqawi operation.

Osama and Zarqawi are both frustrated by the series of reverses they've suffered. But their perspectives on the Islamist war against modern civilization differ profoundly.

Even in hiding, Osama has managed to build an accurate picture of events in the greater Middle East, where his cause is on the ropes. He's realized that Zarqawi's program of videotaped beheadings, suicide bombings against civilian targets and the assassination of teachers, doctors and local officials hasn't won hearts and minds.

Peters draws a great contrast between the long-term, strategic thinking of Bin Laden and the smaller-picture, tactically-focused Zarqawi. If you want a bunch of dead people, killed in variously creative ways Zarqawi is your guy. Bin Laden was perfectly content to encourage him, even "use" him, in such a way while the primary target in Iraq was the political will of the United States. Once we established that our will won't be shaken, the focus shifted to the Iraqi's; an attempt at intimidation on the part of the few to cow the many. Now that it appears to be back-firing, Bin Laden is less than enthusiastic about the approach.

And how do we know it's backfiring? 2000 people spontaneously demonstrating at the scene of the Hilla attack is a revealing hint!

Peters doesn't speculate on what he thinks might come next, he simply summarizes his reading of Bin Laden's recent message to Zarqawi thus:

Osama's message to Zarqawi was one of despair — and a tribute to the millions of Arabs who are turning against his kind.

It is a fair reading of events, I believe. When we're seeing 2000 people chanting "No to terrorism!," in the streets of Iraq; when we're seeing a nation stand up to it's oppressive occupier in Lebanon; when we're seeing hints of greater-democratization of elections in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, I think it more than fair to wonder if the terrorists of the world realize that the foundation for their works is shifting beneath them.