When will they ever learn

[pecunium]

Jonah Goldberg really needs to learn that Trouble rather the tiger in his den than the sage among his books.

Goldberg, as bellatrys pointed out, made the mistake of going after Juan Cole. I may disagree with the arguments Mr. Cole makes, from time to time, but I wouldn't dream of saying he wasn't qualified to make them.

I certainly wouldn't, after a public spanking for committing such an idiocy, return to that folly.

But perhaps that's why I'm not making the sorts of money Mr. Goldberg does, pontificating on television.

Comments

[mayakda.livejournal.com]

I love that sentence.
And so far Cole has a pretty good batting average on Iraq predictions, afaict.

[ad-kay.livejournal.com]

IIRC, he's been right on just about everything I can think of. Which makes his fear of a future Baathist coup pretty scary.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

The trouble with that is the question of the levers of power. At present the Sunni, which is where the Ba'ath party strength is, are out of the loop, which means the people needed to enforce the coup are likely to be thin on the ground.

And the Shi'a have weapons now, and so they may elect to fight back. Which leads to the three faction civil war and the Lebanization (which Cole is real familiar with, since he lived there for six years, during the war).

TK

[ad-kay.livejournal.com]

Cole says something similar about the possibility of a post-coup civil war in this post:
http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/third-baath-coup-if-as-i-have-argued.html