History dummies - Reader comments at The New York Sun

Submitted by Gershon Ben Daniel, Aug 30, 2007 04:15

At the beginnings of our country, in the year 1786, our fledgling United States had reached a turning point. Men would either advance toward self-government or go back in political history to the easy solution of a supreme ruler.

It was touch and go, and the scales could be tipped in either direction. That was our country with leaders of the like of Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison.

George W. Bush and apparently Mark Steyn have not learned this history. These two believe that the country of Iraq which has lived under tyranny and now under warlords, is able to make the giant leap that America made in 1787 when our great Constitution was born.

However, men of the ability of the framers of our Constitution do not live in Iraq. How is Iraq to make it without them? Is the goal to be an Iraq which mirrors the United States?

The vision of our founding fathers recognized that every individual requires two things: personal security and personal dignity. It is the second of these two requirements that makes the difference between security provided by a supreme authority and that offered by the founding fathers of the United States.

George W. Bush and Mark Steyn either forgot this history, or perhaps never knew it. But the people of Iraq understand this concept very well. And that is why they choose dictators and warlords over our way of life. We waste our soldiers who die in this failed attempt to stuff our democracy down the throats of an unwilling Iraqi people.

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