The ballots have been cast, and now the counting begins……. in Iraq, of course.
The last few days have seen an incredible display of ignorance from the news media. These are people who we all presume have been to college, passed “US Government” in High School (otherwise how would they have managed to get into college?) and, presumably, are more educated than the average American overall.
Yet almost to a man (or woman), they have all propounded upon how “disorganized” the “rush” to this process has been, how it is so horrible that there have been contentious moments in the process, and that rival factions have even threatened to try to scuttle the ratification.
We shall not know for a few days, of course, whether it was scuttled – or approved.
But let us remind ourselves of just a few things – and lay forth for all exactly how idiotic it is to listen to the talking heads in the media for your “news”, when they cannot even get the
basic facts straight.
Set your way-back machine for 1776. A small group of British colonies declare independence from the Crown, and go to war when the Crown refuses to “quietly” let go.
A couple years later, the war is over. The British troops, vanquished, return home – well, those who aren’t dead do anyway. The colonists set up a provisional government, under what is known as the
Articles of Confederation, which they agreed to on November 15, 1777. This government was complete with legislatures in each of the colonies. It was a loose and not very cohesive federal government during those days…… but its purpose was to work through the process of writing a formal Constitution – and cementing this nation into the United States of America.
It was not a pleasant – or quiet – process.
It began in 1787, and took nearly two years.
Indeed, there were threats to dissolve the union that flew during these times, with the primary issue being that small states, having proportionally less representation, could be easily “steamrollered”. This, needless to say, was unacceptable to them. The larger states, on the other hand, saw proportional representation as entirely proper and fair.
Nor was this the only issue on the table. Slavery played a prominent role, with the South insisting on not only the right to keep slaves, but to “capitation” – that is, to representation – in some form for their slave population. Northerners didn’t like either idea, and were particularly repulsed by the slave trade itself.
The noise was not confined to loud and contentious words. Violence sometimes played a role, along with intentional economic disruptions. The colonies during this time were far less “congenial” than one might think towards one another, not to mention internally. People of influence, who believed strongly in one position or another, occasionally went “missing” – or worse.
On September 17th, 1787, the Constitution went out for Ratification. But this was not to be the end of the debate – it was not just a formal vote away from acceptance.
Indeed, what occurred next was extraordinary. Several state legislatures
refused to ratify the Constitution. They saw the lack of certain enumerated rights delegated to either the people or the states as absolute “deal breakers” – without them they would not agree.
The succeeding two years were contentious indeed. While the Constitution was finally ratified on 6/21 of 1788, it was only with the promise that the Bill of Rights – our first ten amendments – would be forthcoming that these votes were cast. And indeed, they were – the Bill of Rights was ratified on the 25th of September, 1789 – just six months after the Constitution itself went into effect.
Now how does this all relate to what is going on in Iraq?
Simple – there are many in the media who have claimed that there is something “ominous” or “extraordinary” about the 11th hour concessions to the Sunnis which were made. There is also plenty of noise being made about how “bad” it is that people aren’t just getting along, signing on, and being done with it. Not to mention all the angst at the time involved – why, we’ve been at this for a couple of years now, and we still don’t have a fully functional Iraqi government! Sacrilege!
That’s nonsense, and those “journalists” who make these claims should not only be fired, the news organizations that allow them to spew this tripe upon our eyes and ears should absolutely be distrusted with
anything they try to report – now or in the future – for it is clear that they are either intentionally misleading the public, or are too stupid to go read about how
THIS country was founded.
By all rights, win or lose in the balloting today, the Iraqi people are just about on track to forming their new government. It should not be expected that this will be, or should have been, a quiet, congenial process. Certainly we cannot point to the
American experience as evidence of such a process having worked its way out through nothing more than quiet conversation.
Yet we seem to have arrived at a compromise – although the path to get there was filled with rhetoric, threats, and even some violent acts. As anyone who has studied even a small amount of American History is aware, the violence didn’t end with ratification of the Bill of Rights either – not all that long down the road, we suffered a civil war over some of those very same unresolved issues that presented themselves in that Constitutional Convention.
Read your history folks.
Then go ask the media why they don’t read theirs.
