Maureen Dowd's article in NY Times notes Robert Kagan's (who is a neoconservative and Iraq war advocate who co-founded the prescient Working Group on Egypt) criticism of Obama administration for its failure to predict the Egyptian unrest long before. Alas, I know some comments of social scientists that underlined improbability of an Egyptian revolution right after the Jasmine revolution in Tunisia two weeks ago. Now, the US politicians are in queue to blame one another.
A revolution is like an earthquake. You could anticipate where it might happen by studying fault types; yet, you would never know its exact place & timing. In this sense, it's often quite unpredictable. Social scientists hate the capricious quality of revolutions. Yet, this very quality have appealed scholars for a long time.
Foretelling the upcoming revolution in Egypt is not a scientific prediction anymore. Mubarak can leave the country at any moment and the Egyptian revolutionaries have already started to chant victory songs. The media pundits' forecasts in these days are more like the national weather alert for an approaching winter storm. Get ready for the new phase of the Middle Eastern politics!
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