Two voices seem notoriously absent from the Lebanese quagmire--that of bin Laden and Zawahiri. The hole-in-the-mountain gang were rumored to be spinning up a tape last week, then the rumors cooled. Experts wondered which side, if any, they would take. Apparently they're comfortable with taking none right now. The winds are already shifting, with signs pointing to Hamas warming up to talks about a deal on Shalit, all without a visit from Condi, Kofi or Lou Dobbs. Hizballah seemed to steal Hamas' thunder with their copycat kidnapping/attack, and the Sunnis have not exactly embraced the Lebanese jihad as yet. So unless they are having studio problems in the cave it's kind of weird for AQ not to take a public stand while IDF bombs whistle down on Lebanon.
One reason might be they don't want to mess up a good thing. The age-old sectarian feud is still running strong and there's no reason to believe Arab unity will suddenly pop up now. Why would bin Laden want Ahmadinejad to get credit for bringing down the Jews? The new caliphate ain't gonna be headquartered in Tehran, and Israel's destruction can wait.
Meanwhile Saddam is the screaming child in the corner. Long before he finished his 30th palace the vision of leading the Arabs over the Jews has been legacy one. Calling for unity is the only way he wins that legacy, but sectarian strife is the only way he realistically escapes the hangman. Recall that his henchmen remain the prime suspects in the Golden Dome scandal.
So what might Saddam really want? He's surely pragmatic enough to realize the Sunnis and Shias will never just get along, therefore his unity calls are probably nothing but fluff. In reality he desperately wants the trial moved outside the country and as we've seen, will stop at nothing to reach that destiny, even if it means having his own legal team murdered into martyrdom. A tangled web, indeed.
There's a way to exploit this, but it's way above my pay grade. Besides, I've yet to figure it out.
MORE 7/24/06
Gateway Pundit points out that not everyone thinks Saddam's sectarian division program has been successful.
MORE 7/25/06
The predictable is coming true. Hizballah has started the backpeddle while the the media is reporting a UNIFIL observation post was hit by an errant bomb. Maybe everyone will now realize a UN force is already present in the area. Israel prefers a NATO deployment similar to Afghanistan and the Balkans. They can hardly be blamed.
It certainly looks like Israel has called everyone's bluff.
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