Iraq: Like 1787 except with less powerful white people

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Ezra:

[W]e like to imagine Iraq's current Constitutional Convention as an analogue, at least of sorts, to the one attended by our own Founding Fathers.

But that's a bit off the mark. It's more as if our Founding Fathers had to also deal with powerful, represented contingents of newly freed black slaves and politically empowered Native Americans.

Could they do it?

It's one thing to create a democratic republic of basically similar white people, but quite another to deal with ethnic groups who you've traditionally subjugated (or have traditionally subjugated you) and apportion the country in such a way that your dominance is accepted by their leaders. That's what Iraq is going through right now.

Ezra also quotes Harold Meyerson who says this:

It looks increasingly as if President Bush may have been off by 74 years in his assessment of Iraq. By deposing the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, Bush assumed he would bring Iraq to its 1787 moment -- the crafting of a democratic constitution, the birth of a unified republic. Instead, he seems to have brought Iraq to the brink of its own 1861 -- the moment of national dissolution.

Dr. Rice you get the last word:

We are witnessing democracy in Iraq.

Damn -- is there anything about this war that Bush doesn't have some lame excuse for? Even one single thing?

Someone once said, you can be good at making excuses or you can be good at getting results. You hardly ever see someone try to do both.

P.S. Yeah, I know: it's all the Iraqis' fault. We should double-invade their asses!