Slitting Their Own Throats

So much for the "civil war" in Iraq the media and American anti-war demonstrators have been all but hoping for:

Iraq lifted an extraordinary daylight curfew in three governorates on Sunday as the wave of violence that followed Wednesday's destruction of a Shia shrine appeared to ebb outside the capital.

But the ban on traffic in Baghdad – which last night suffered a mortar attack that killed 15 and wounded at least another 30 people – remained in place. In other sporadic violence on Sunday another seven people died, including two US soldiers.

The apparent absence of organised reprisals at the weekend, however, suggests that while the destruction of the dome of the al-Askariya shrine and the ensuing wave of Shia attacks on Sunnis has brought the country the closest it has come to sectarian civil war, key religious and political leaders on both sides have this time been both willing and able to de-escalate the crisis.

The attack on the al-Askariya shrine was probably al Qaeda's last best hope of triggering a sectarian civil war in Iraq. Instead of ripping the nation apart however, it seems to have had the opposite effect, driving the leaders of Iraq's various ethnic groups closer together in a conflict against a common enemy.

al Qaeda, already growing unpopular with the Sunni tribes that once supported them, can be expected to start falling in greater numbers, as seen in the death of Abu Asma, the Al Qaeda Military Emir of Northern Baghdad three days ago.

al Qaeda had only a slim chance to prevail in this conflict when it started. Continued strategic and tactical blunders such as these exacerbate their problems.

Faster, please.