Posted on 12/13/2005 10:46:42 PM PST by Congressman Billybob
On Special Report with Brit Hume on Fox News, 13 December, 2005, Senator Joe Biden (D, Delaware) said the following in reply to President Bush’s third policy speech on Iraq in Philadelphia yesterday:
“Failure to get a consensus constitution spells doom for our policy in Iraq. So what is the plan, Mr. President? That is still lacking.”
After saying that means participation by the UN, NATO, and Iraq’s neighbors, Biden added:
“If this time next year nothing has changed concerning in terms of our success rate, we will be out of Iraq. The American people will not sustain this.”
The transcript of this is not up yet, but these quotes are TiVo’ed and accurate.
The full answer to these historically foolish statements by Senator Biden were given by President Bush in the first ten minutes of his speech in Philadelphia, on Monday. Bush began by recounting the history of America writing its own Constitution. He took time to note that our first attempt to draft an acceptable constitution was an abject failure. Under the Articles of Confederation, our government failed financially, and there were armed rebellions in the streets.
As the President carefully pointed out, it took us “eight years to write our Constitution.” The Battle of Yorktown effectively ended the American Revolution in 1781. It was not until 1789 that our Constitution was both written and ratified, to replace the Articles of Confederation, which had failed.
So the first historical nonsense stated by Senator Biden was that the American people will not “sustain” more than a one-year wait to obtain workable constitution.
But the worse error in Senator Biden’s remarks, as compared to America’s own constitutional history, was his claim that to be successful, Iraq had to write a “consensus constitution,” acceptable to its neighbors. Is the Senator totally ignorant of recent history? Money, fighters and weapons are leaking into Iraq across its borders with Iran and Syria. Just today, Americans captured a tanker truck that came in from Iran which concealed thousands of forged ballots for the current Iraq election.
What kind of constitution would Iraq have, if its neighbors who want it to fail, had any kind of approval rights over it? None.
The same answer comes from American history. What kind of Constitution would we have written and ratified if it had to be by “consensus” with our neighbors? Our neighbors were then Britain, which still controlled Canada, and France, which still controlled the Louisiana Territory. We, too, would have never achieved our Constitution, under conditions like those that Senator Biden said are essential.
But Americans in reading or watching the news would be totally unaware of the American history which demonstrates that Senator Biden’s remarks are foolish, from the MSM coverage of Bush’s speech. Only 6 of the 128 hits from “Articles of Confederation” on Google News are news stories. Most of the rest are the full text of the Bush speech. Most Americans don’t read the whole text of speeches, nor watch them live in full on TV.
The simple fact is that the MSM, because they are lazy, foolish or biased, buried the lede. The important comparison between American and Iraqi constitution writing, including initial and major failures, was edited out of almost all news stories about that speech. So, the comparison which demonstrated in advance that Senator Biden’s remarks are downright foolish, wasn’t presented.
Contrary to the way that history is (mis)taught in American schools today, history did not begin yesterday. The history of America’s constitution writing is directly relevant to the current history of Iraq’s similar efforts today. And these facts were presented by the President, but largely ignored by the MSM.
John_Armor@aya.yale.edu
I think y'all will find this interesting.
John / Billybob
PING
Good stuff, Congressman. Keep up the good work in conservatism. We always need you.
What a total ass.
Really good article.
if he said that then there is no hope for sanity.
Biden is 4 cents short of a dime, his elevator stops short of his top floor, he is a useless piece of lying crap.
That too.
Biden is the only real threat to Boxer for the dimmest bulb title.
bttt
Joe Biden really has to make one reconsider the practice of birthright citizenship.
Good God. I always knew that biden was both a blithering idiot and a traitor, but this has to be among his most idiotic yappings ever.
If he was consistent in his thoughts, then any bill that he or his cohorts propose MUST be approved by Canada, Mexico, Kofi and NATO too.
To the devil with him and all his kind.
Its an Orwellian Media Conspiracy apparently.
Biden claims we failed to get a "consensus Constitution" in Iraq, yet 78% of Iraqi voters voted FOR the constitution. In a country "on the verge of civil war" and that had "no hope" of ever coming to any accord on any issue, according to insufferable boobs like Biden and his lame-brained fawning buddies in the media, because of the 3 divided ethnic groups that make up Iraq, I'd say 78% is a pretty damned healthy bit of agreement in a country where it was said there would never be any. Our constitution certainly didn't have that kind of backing. And you'd be damned hard-pressed to get American voters to agree to anything by a 78% majority.
I'd even go so far as to bet that 78% is a higher percentage than voted for Joe Biden in his last senate run, even in a wacko useless leftist state like Delaware. I guess since he's not a "consensus" candidate he better resign.
Since when is democracy about consensus?? Consensus is what we had when 99.9% of the Iraqis "voted for" Saddam. Democracy is about the clash of ideas and then voters having the right by majority say to implement those ideas and to put those candidates in office. Everyone not agreeing to something does not indicate that an idea or candidate is invalid. It means in the healthy and democratic exchange of ideas opposing opinions were heard and were able to sway a minority of the electorate which is as it should be. Why is that bad Joe? Losen up the stitches on the toupee Joe...you friggin' putz.
Haha! Kerry didn't even take Marin County, California--the bastion of leftwing kook morons--by that margin.
Don't agree with the analysis, but I'll tell you what. Between the other dems DEMANDING a pullout, and Biden asserting that we WILL pull out if things are BAD, I suspect that Bush plans to begin the pull out any day, as soon as elections put a government in place.
Once we're out, he'll be on political Cloud Nine, with higher approval ratings, et al. Dems are trying to position themselves, some to take credit, others (like Biden here) to assert that it's a sign Bush failed.
there's a reason that the great one (mark levin) calls the plagiarist, the dumbest man in the senate.
The Left believes in "consensus" (otherwise defined as "minority rights") in all things, except when they're in charge (or in doctored opinion polling, when the "vox populi" must rule).
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