It’s fascinating to hear media liberals speak somberly about fomenting a coup to install an Iraqi strongman. If they had any knowledge of the region (or of history) they would know that an American-run coup to overthrow Maliki would succeed as well as the coup as the November 1, 1963 coup against Ngo Dinh Diem engineered by John Kennedy. ~Jed Babbin

Via Clark Stooksbury

It may be the case that a coup against Maliki wouldn’t work.  One wonders whether Mr. Babbin thinks that if only Diem had been allowed to stay in power we might have prevailed.  Then again, the appearance of a strongman might be welcomed as the coming of a deliverer.  Given the circumstances, anyone promising order would win supporters.  Like all normal people, Iraqis abhor anarchy.  It is an old Arabic proverb that I have heard that goes, “Better sixty years of tyranny than one night of anarchy.”  So by that calculation, taking the anarchy of the last three years as our starting point, Iraqis ought to be ready for a good, solid 50,000 years of tyranny.  That will put us a little behind on the “ending tyranny in this century” schedule, but nothing’s perfect.

But what kind of earth-shattering irony is it to have a supporter of the Iraq war and the great “freedom agenda” lecturing anyone about “any knowledge of the region (or of history)”?  Have we seen war supporters display much of either of these in the last four years?  It has gone rather something like this: Drain the swamp, “we’ll be greeted as liberators,” “democracies don’t war,” “tribe or religion or whatever,” Islamofascism, 1938, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!”, burble, burble.