With the death of Zarqawi brings a new and interesting question – could we have helped out al Qaeda?

To help you understand this line of thinking, let’s go back in the near past (h/t to Think Progress on this one):

Jordanian-born al Qaeda militant Abu Musab Zarqawi has been replaced as head of the terrorist organization in Iraq in a bid to put an Iraqi figure at the head of the group’s struggle, said a leading Islamist.

But terrorism specialists were divided on whether the move represented a demotion for the figure most closely identified with a wave of suicide bombings and beheadings or a move by Zarqawi to focus his efforts on a larger regional war.

Huthayafa Azzam, whose father is seen as a political mentor of al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, told reporters in Jordan over the weekend that Zarqawi, who has not made a public statement in months, was no longer the head of al Qaeda in Iraq and that his role “has been limited to military action.”

Azzam, who claims close contacts with leading insurgents inside Iraq, said Zarqawi had “made many political mistakes,” including kidnappings and beheadings that sparked popular revulsion and unauthorized operations outside Iraq, such as the November bombing of a Jordanian hotel.

The resistance command inside and outside Iraq, including imams, criticized [Zarqawi] and after long discussions demanded that he be confined to military action,” Azzam told the Associated Press and other news outlets.

Now that appeared in the April 4, 2006 issue of The Washington Times. Now today’s news has reported Zarqawi as the leader of “al Qaeda in Iraq”. Actually, even Bush didn’t refer to him as “the leader” but rather the “operational commander“:

Zarqawi was the operational commander of the terrorist movement in Iraq. He led a campaign of car bombings, assassinations and suicide attacks that has taken the lives of many American forces and thousands of innocent Iraqis. Osama bin Laden called this Jordanian terrorist “the prince of al Qaeda in Iraq.” He called on the terrorists around the world to listen to him and obey him. Zarqawi personally beheaded American hostages and other civilians in Iraq. He masterminded the destruction of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad. He was responsible for the assassination of an American diplomat in Jordan, and the bombing of a hotel in Amman

What makes one wonder about how everything came into play is the reports that people close to him actually helped our troops in finding him for the bombing:

The targeted airstrike Wednesday evening was the culmination of a two-week-long hunt for al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. Tips from senior militants led U.S. forces to follow al-Zarqawi’s spiritual adviser to the safe house, 30 miles outside Baghdad, for a meeting with the terror leader. The adviser, Sheik Abdul Rahman, was among those killed.

So we have a person who was on the outs with the biggest terrorist organization in the world. This caused for him to receive a recent demotion in status within that organization then two short months later we are able to find the man and kill him, but only with the aid of “senior militants”.

Remember – we are dealing with terrorists, who have an entirely different outlook on life, death and the operations of their forces. Zarqawi was a powerful man with many followers (including Hamas), and if al Qaeda were to sever ties with him, it could lead to another fight for the terrorist organization. Now if al Qaeda could orchestrate this man being killed by their number one enemy, it would lead to Zarqawi becoming a martyr and more joining in the fight for al Qaeda.

So could we have done al Qaeda a favor today? It looks like it could be entirely possible.