Politicians and Super-Pundits vs. Some Guy With a Blog

Back on May 22, preznitial hopeful Evan Bayh said this:

Bayh said if the Iraqi factions “get their political act together — and we will know this in the next six to eight weeks… if they can form a government… then there’s something to work with there.” If not, then “we’re out.”

Atrios dutifully marked his calendar, and six to eight weeks later, pointed out that things are still a giant mess. Now Bayh's office has responded, and sure enough, "we're out" is no longer operative.

Now, I'm just some guy with a blog. I'm not a Senator, and I'm not a Super-Pundit, but I'd like to start making some predictions of my own. We can see whether Senators and Super-Pundits really know better than some guy with a blog.

I predict that in six to eight weeks, or six months, we won't know anything more about Iraq than we know right now. In six to eight weeks, Sunnis will still be killing Shi'ites en masse, Shi'ites will still be killing Sunnis en masse, and the Iraqi government won't be able to stop this from happening. In six months, nothing will be different. In one year, nothing will be different. And the U.S. death toll will keep slowly rising, along with the cost of the whole mess.

So, I'll mark my calendar, and in eight weeks, then six months, we'll see how things look. Of course, just about anyone who's been watching that little dustup in Iraq knows that nothing will be resolved in eight weeks or six months. So why do people who are paid to have important opinions about this matter keep pretending otherwise? Because, basically, they're chickenshit. "Wait a few more months" is such a convenient cop-out for taking an actual position, and mortgaging your credibility to avoid making hard choices. You don't have to look like a cut-and-run defeatist hate-America-firster, nor do you have to look like a wishful-thinking warhawk, furiously oblivious to reality. You get to look like a serious, sober-minded realist who above all else, doesn't want to take any hasty measures that we might regret later.

Well, guess what guys. It -is- later. Waiting and seeing is going to do nothing except increase the body count and the bill. We won't know anything about Iraq in six months that we don't know now.