Senator Kerry Accuses Mccain of Being Confused - Confusingly
Senator Kerry accused John McCain of being confused today stating McCain “confuses the history going back to 682 of what has happened to Sunni and Shia.” Well now I am confused Senator, exactly what was the significance of the year 682? Could it be that Senator Kerry was confused himself when making that statement? As Michael Goldfarb points out the year Senator Kerry actually meant was 632:
Among the accusations he leveled this morning, Senator Kerry said Senator McCain “confuses the history going back to 682 of what has happened to Sunni and Shia.” Now, we at the McCain Report have been receiving a great number of panicked emails from supporters all morning, deeply troubled by Senator Kerry’s suggestion that Senator McCain is anything less than totally familiar with the finer points of 7th century Islamic history. And frankly, we were worried too, at first. After all, we know that — more than keeping America safe from its enemies abroad, more than getting our economy back on track, more than breaking through the partisan gridlock that is preventing Washington from solving the problems we as a nation face — Americans want, nay demand, that their next Commander in Chief is intimately familiar with the “history going back to 682 of what has happened to the Sunni and Shia.”
There’s only one thing that gives us pause. The date Senator Kerry cited this morning — 682 A.D. — has no significance in explaining the sectarian schism between Sunnis and Shiites. Shiites trace the split to 632 A.D. — the year that Muhammed died — not 682. The battle of Karbala — one of the most important battles in the history of Islam, commemorated by Shia Muslims the world over during the holiday of Ashura — took place in 680 A.D. Still two years off. Now, obviously, it would be more than a bit ironic if it turned out that Senator Kerry himself — in the midst of pompously trying to show off his superior knowledge and erudition — got confused about the history of the Sunni-Shiite schism. But based on his adroit performance in the 2004 presidential campaign, we’re sure that he’d never commit such a gaffe.
Still, we can’t help but wonder — just what exactly was Senator Kerry talking about?
Makes one wonder if this was simply a mis-statement similar to Obama’s remarks about the 57 States, or is it willful ignorance that it to blame? You would think that a high profile politician giving a prepared statement in an attempt to paint another politician as “confused” would at least take a few moments to make sure he was not confused himself.
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Yup. You and Goldfarb (McCain’s blogger, who, by the way, has atrocious grammar–case in point: “want, nay demand, that their next Commander in Chief is” rather than “…Commander-in-Chief be,” for the subjunctive) are completely right, Charlie. Forget the fact that we’re sending our soldiers into the middle of a Civil War that has been fought silently and sometimes not so silently for more than a millennium; forget the fact that perhaps a greater, better understanding of that conflict might enable us to reason as the people that are trying to kill our troops and one another do, and to obviate violence thereby; forget the fact that having a better understanding of the conflict might prompt us to leave the region and either allow the conflict to play itself out or to partition Iraq into three autonomous communities (as the great statesman and pioneer of real politik Niccolò Machiavelli suggests all such conflicts are resolved)… Forget all of that. We should just stay there with no knowledge whatsoever of the reasons that underlie the violence and the fracas and hope that somehow we might prevail. Almost as daring and innovative an idea as your notion of having Americans be no more than yeomen making a living working the fields. Conservatism explained! They also have a few other words for that–insularity, ignorance, folly, and my personal favorite, stupidity.
John Kerry was off by fifty years. McCain wouldn’t have known the event took place. He might not even have known who that gosh-darned Mohammad is. This is, after all, the man whose class rank was 894. Out of 899 students.
And then the right wonders why the rest of the world doesn’t embrace their ideas… *sigh*