Monday, June 27, 2011

Fussing with Our Pool

It looks like anyone who had June or before is going to lose in the Qaddafi pool o' regime change.  Pundits are now pondering whether the involvement of the International Criminal Court will lead to an earlier or later resolution, including the NYT's Nicholas Kristof who tweeted:
Int'l Criminal Court Issues Arrest Warrant for Qaddafi An office pool for date he's arrested?
As followers of my blog now, we already have a pool, but it is a broader one of regime change.  Qaddafi may or may not be arrested and sent to The Hague.  That is one possible outcome that one could wager on in my on-going pool.  The relevance of the arrest warrant is whether it will speed up or slow down Qaddafi's departure from his Iron Throne (or whatever they call it).  Roland Paris in his new blog at the Canadian International Council, R2P v. ICC?, suggests that there might be a bit of a tradeoff between doing what is right (indicting) and doing what is best (getting the bastard out of power). 

However, as others have tweeted, Qaddafi has never seemed likely to walk away, so it is not clear that the threat of an arrest if he steps aside changes things much.  There has been talk of negotiations but not clear that they can go anywhere.  Still, the war goes on.  Oops, the conflict short of hostilities goes on.

The old pool has these options left:
June 20th to July 3rd--things start to get too hot for Qaddafi, jail cell in cool Hague sounds good.
July 4th--if it is good enough for Will Smith, it is good enough for Qaddafi.
July 5th-28th--Qaddafi wants to give a gift to me or my many relatives who have a birthday in this period.
July 29th-August 30th--Qaddafi wants to sneak out while most of Europe is on vacation.
August 31st-Sept 4th--Big events seem to happen during the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association (Katrina), so Qaddafi will quit while most of the American experts are otherwise indisposed.
Sept 5th to the end of the year--slow but steady wins the race?
Last possible choice: Qaddafi lasts as long as the world (if the world ends on Jan 1st 2012).  This is the choice for the NATO doubters--that the effort fails and Qaddafi sticks around.
Matt Eckel has most of July,Stephanie Carvin has APSA, and Chris C. has August.   Thus, we still have until July 3rd, July 4th, the rest of the year, and next year and beyond open.  

Oh, the stakes are: winner gets to post in my blog whatever they want, including snarky takes (true or false) to embarrass me.


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