Another man obviously not reading this blog...

Juan Cole has called out Jonah Goldberg. It's pretty awesome.

But let me back up for those of you not versed in the blogsophere. Juan Cole is a very smart History Professor from the University of Michigan who runs the thoroughly excellent Middle Eastern affairs blog Informed Comment. See, he's big on that concept - making judgements on issues about which you are informed.

Which is why I say that he must not read this blog. Because I, like 90% of bloggers, am prone to extended pontification about random topics I have never thoroughly studied. And only a fool thinks he knows things about things he knows nothing about. So, like I said, I'm as guilty of this as any man. The only difference is, the people reading my blog are my friends and my mother, who comments on my blog so often, I'm appointing her Crushed By Inertia's Official Statler and Waldorf.

The people reading Jonah Goldberg's nonsensical hawkish rantings on Jewish World Review, on the other hand, number in the tens of thousands. He's a respected political commentator, who appears regularly on CNN. Yeah, the Cable News Network. His point is basically that it was theoretically possible Saddam might have nuclear weapons, so we had a right to attack him, because nuclear weapons are so bad. In his words:

We called Saddam's bluff, which was our perfect right given the stakes...Bush decided to stay partly out of a different realist analysis of our national interest: A democratic Middle East, he believes, is the best chance for stopping the production of terrorists. But we also stayed as a matter of honor.

You see, folks? It's simple! It's honorable to bomb a country into oblivion even though they didn't pose us any potential threat. Their leader flatly denied having nuclear weapons, but he was a liar, so we had the right to arrest him and rip up the countryside looking for them. Duh.

And Juan Cole basically couldn't take it any more. On Informed Comment, he accused Jonah Goldberg of excessively pontificating on a subject about which he knows nothing.

Jonah Goldberg knows absolutely nothing about Iraq. I wonder if he has even ever read a single book on Iraq, much less written one. He knows no Arabic. He has never lived in an Arab country. He can't read Iraqi newspapers or those of Iraq's neighbors. He knows nothing whatsoever about Shiite Islam, the branch of the religion to which a majority of Iraqis adheres. Why should we pretend that Jonah Goldberg's opinion on the significance and nature of the elections in Iraq last Sunday matters? It does not.

Devastating.

If Jonah Goldberg had asserted that he could fly to Mars in his pyjamas and come back in a single day, it would not have been a more fantastic allegation than the one he made about Iraq being a danger to the United States because of the nuclear issue. He made that allegation over and over again to millions of viewers on national television programs, to viewers who trusted his judgment because CNN and others purveyed him to them.

Jonah Goldberg is a fearmonger, a warmonger, and a demagogue. And besides, he was just plain wrong about one of the more important foreign policy issues to face the United States in the past half-century. It is shameful that he dares show his face in public, much less continuing to pontificate about his profound knowledge of just what Iraq is like and what needs to be done about Iraq and the significance of events in Iraq.
Ouch.

I'll close with J. Goldberg's excuse for not being in Iraq. I mean, clearly he feels this war is important, so why not go suit up, you might ask?

As for why my sorry a** isn't in the kill zone, lots of people think this is a searingly pertinent question. No answer I could give -- I'm 35 years old, my family couldn't afford the lost income, I have a baby daughter, my a** is, er, sorry, are a few -- ever seem to suffice. But this chicken-hawk nonsense is something that's been batted around too many times to get into again here.

And, of course, as Atrios and Rising Hegemon have both already pointed out, being 35 and having a family have hardly prevented literally thousands of Americans from serving their country in Iraq.

This is as fine a time as ever to remind everyone reading this here political commentary that, though I despise the War on Terror and the people behind it, particularly our fear-mongering weasel of a president, I have no problem with the Americans currently serving in the military. Those are average citizens who only want a good job, a normal life and an end to the war so they can come home and be with their families. My problem is with assholes like Goldberg, who generate fear and hatred in an attempt, for whatever reason, to extend conflict.

As for me, I try to only make comments on The Inertia about topics I have experience with - movies, working at a video store, that sort of thing. But I will concede that I occasionally post without thinking too carefully (as when I wished Zach Braff would develop cancer). I'll try to do better. If Jonah Goldberg promises to shut up and go away forever.