UPDATE: Forget the $$ Jonah Goldberg

Posted by Evan Derkacz at 11:37 AM on February 8, 2007.

Turns out the last refuge of scoundrels isn't patriotism at all, it's changing the subject.

A couple years back, as Jeff Cohen's article recounts, National Review chickenhawk Jonah Goldberg tried to make a bet with Middle East scholar Juan Cole regarding the future of Iraq.

It was an embarrassing exercise that will probably never happen again.

Goldberg's list of brilliant positions is worth the laugh: He's written in favor of the colonization of Africa (it helped them!) and longs for an Iraqi Pinochet. He had trouble opposing the "noble war" on Iraq because he didn't like those who opposed it from the start and once, in an ideological fury he penned an embarrassing LA Times column "exposing" Upton Sinclair as a charlatan -- only he'd taken passages of a "new" letter out of context and fabricated something out of nothing.

It's beyond even discussing Goldberg as a serious person.

So now that his predictions that there would be no civil war in Iraq, that there'd be a "viable constitution" and "that a majority of Iraqis and Americans will, in two years time, agree that the war was worth it," have fallen quite flat he's taken to whining that Cole actually refused the bet and to harping on the tone of the emails he's received.

Forget the emails, forget the bet. Focus on the facts: Goldberg screwed up, he's unrepentant, he supported a disaster of a war. But, in true chickenhawk fashion, he's taken to changing the subject. From a couple weeks back:

As a matter of intellectual honesty, I'm perfectly willing to admit that, had Cole had the courage to accept the wager, he would have won and I would have made good on it. But, since he didn't, I won't be jumping through hoops for this crowd beyond this post.

All bow to this feat of intellectual honesty.

UPDATE:

Editor and Publisher reports that the liberal blogs are actually raising money to pay off Jonah Goldberg's debt. As of this morning they'd raised $800 of the $1000 he wagered...

Dave Astor writes:

In a blog entry today, Welch said to Goldberg: "(A)ll I ask that you do in return for the fact that we lefties are covering your bet is admit clearly and publicly that Juan Cole's judgment is superior to yours when it comes to the big picture."

But Welch also emphasized in the post and to E&P that the money from progressive bloggers is going to the USO no matter what Goldberg does.

"As someone who slept in a few airport USOs while in the service and drank plenty of the coffee at the USO on Bagram Air Field, I know how helpful the USO is to soldiers away from home," wrote Welch, whose entire post can be seen by clicking here.

Tagged as: neocons, iraq, jonah goldberg, national review

Evan Derkacz is an AlterNet editor. He writes and edits PEEK, the blog of blogs.