Philadelphia 1787 vs. Baghdad 2005

Bush's lousy analogy.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Friday, Aug. 19, 2005, at 2:05 PM PT

When things go particularly badly in Iraq—anarchy, insurgency, and now the delays in crafting a constitution—President George W. Bush and his top aides point reassuringly to the turbulence surrounding our own Founding Fathers' exertions to forge a republic.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld first sought solace in history back in March 2003, only weeks after Saddam Hussein was toppled. America in the 1780s, he noted, was marked by "chaos and confusion … crime and looting … popular discontent." "Our first effort at a governing charter—the Articles of Confederation—failed miserably," he added, "and it took eight years of contentious debate before we finally adopted our constitution and inaugurated our first president."