Bush's Lousy Analogy

This is for the truly history minded out there (Nick?) but it just goes to illustrate the rhetoric Bush Co. & their surrogates throw around comparing Philadelphia 1787 to Baghdad 2005 to get the 'merican public to feel good about Iraq.

The rhetoric:

President Bush picked up on the theme, in nearly identical terms, in a speech just last May: "The American Revolution was followed by years of chaos. … Our first effort at a governing charter, the Articles of Confederation, failed miserably. It took several years before we finally adopted our Constitution and inaugurated our first President. … No nation in history has made the transition from tyranny to a free society without setbacks and false starts."

In other words, so this argument goes, the United States of America took 11 years to go from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution; therefore, don't be surprised that Iraq is still writhing a mere two years after the fall of Saddam—or that the delegates to its constitutional convention are experiencing difficulties.

I love that: "a mere 2 years"... hey look, 'merica was promised a self-paying cake-walk, free from historic ethnic/religious tensions complete with flowers and Iraqi chocolate, not 'writhing.' I never once heard anything about 'writhing.'

Suffice to say 'The Analogy' is less than perfect, but the rest of the article will illuminate it a bit more...