1787 With Fewer White People

Harold Meyerson has a very good op-ed on Iraq in today's Washington Post:

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.

It's true. I was thinking about this the other day: we 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 Found 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. And, thinking about it, I gotta say: even with the deification of Jefferson, Adams and all the rest, my wildly inflated opinion of the group still doesn't think they could've figured this one out. But then, I'm no longer particularly convinced this one can be figured out. If I'm wrong, however, and Iraq does have a happy ending, their "Founding Fathers" are going to deserve some damn fine plaques in recognition.