On Wednesday evening, a U.S. air strike on a safehouse just east of Baqouba, Iraq killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of Iraq’s Al Qaeda organization and one of the world’s most active and deadliest terrorists. Shortly, thereafter, Al Qaeda in Iraq issued a statement that read, “The death of our leaders is life for us. It will only increase our persistence in continuing holy war so that the word of God will be supreme.” Hours later, a car bomb blew up in a Baghdad market.

The successful air strike against al-Zarqawi is a positive deveopment in the ongoing global war on Islamist terrorism. Anytime a killer of al-Zarqawi’s stature is taken out of circulation, progress is made. However, Radical Islam, the ideology behind Islamist terrorism, isn’t the product of al-Zarqawi and his like. Rather, al-Zarqawi and his like are the products of Radical Islam.

Radical Islam, also known as Islamism, which should be distinguished from Islam itself, presents arguably the biggest threat to international peace and security in the opening years of the 21st century. By its very nature, it renders diplomacy useless.

Diplomacy entails the negotiation over disputes. The pursuit of diplomacy rests on the assumption that a given dispute is not irreconcilable. If a dispute is not irreconcilable, then the negotiating process can lead to common ground that bridges the parties’ differences in such a fashion that the core needs of all of the parties are met, even if some or many of their more ambitious or expansive desires are not.

» Read more: Victory in War on Terrorism Requires the Defeat of Radical Islam