Sibling Punditry

"Always two there are, no more, no less. A master and an apprentice."

This one is about credit being delivered where credit is due. There is a teaspoonful for myself and a great chocolate-drizzled scoop of credit for my beloved sister.

I was looking for an old essay of mine and came across one from 2006 titled “The Next Saddam.” In it I point out that such disasters as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait don’t just pop up out of nowhere. There is a long string of circumstance leading up to the first shot being fired. In that case it included U.S. intervention on behalf of a dictator. I traversed from Saddam Hussein to the Shah of Iran and mused that there were probably other dictators in the Middle East and Central Asia desperately trying to hide the cracks in the foundation.

My pick for Most Likely to Abscond was Islam Karimov, the butcher of Uzbeckistan. My sister, under the nom de heresy Not a Jedi Yet, pointed a prescient finger at Hosni Mubarak, now former president of Egypt. This was not a random pin-the-tail-on-the-dictator guess. She backed her pick with reason and evidence. She was five years ahead of the pack, and it all fell pat as she predicted.

Not a Jedi Yet? The Force is strong in her punditry. Will she make more accurate predictions? Is she destined for a slot on cable news? Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future…