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Joe Biden’s Iraqi Menage a Trois
By Bill | October 13, 2007 | Email This Post
Joe Biden is hoping the recent Senate vote on a resolution backing his solution for Iraq will carry translate in to momentum for his campaign. The Senator arguably has, by far, the most credible foreign policy experience of the entire lot of candidates running this year, whether Democrat or Republican. Biden’s plan is notable enough that 75 senators voted for it (to translate, that’s three quarters of them, including 26 Republicans who crossed the aisle… when in recent history has three quarters of the Senate agreed on anything?) It’s also worth mentioning that Presidential rival Sam Brownback took time during the October 9, 2007 Republican debate to speak favorably of the option. So, what’s his plan all about?
Naturally it includes the things you would expect: bring United States troops home, enlist the support of the world, and so forth… all the things any Democrat with an opinion on the matter has said. But the interesting part, the core of the plan, to quote from Biden himself, is:
- Federalize Iraq in accordance with its constitution by establishing three or more regions - Shiite, Sunni and Kurd — with a strong but limited central government in Baghdad
- Put the central government in charge of truly common interests: border defense, foreign policy, oil production and revenues
- Form regional and local governments that give Kurds, Sunni and Shiites control over the fabric of their daily lives: security, education, marriage, social services.
Critics, among them the Bush administration and Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, are deriding the plan as doing nothing more than fracturing the country into three pieces. Others, including President Jalal Talabani and prominent Shiite leader Ammar al-Hakim see merit in the plan. The idea is not such a stretch; the Iraqi constitution provides for just such a division of the country, but not until sufficient elections have taken place (which they have not, and they do seem to be slow in coming.) Moreover, the Kurds in the north of Iraq have enjoyed de facto control of their own affairs for some time now, and they are frequently held forth as an example of success in a country that’s otherwise a complete mess.
Not that there aren’t legitimate reasons to view the idea with suspicion. Iraq largely divides up into a Kurdish north, a Shiite south, and a Sunni middle… with Iraq’s vast oil reserves concentrated in the northern and southern areas, leaving the Sunnis to stare frustratedly at their barren sand; it is no wonder that they have serious concerns about such a proposition, despite the promise that oil revenues would be distributed centrally. So, too, it is understandable that the Iraqis would be reluctant to embrace an American plan to fix their country, given the underwhelming success of the last effort.
Still, in political season which has offered us the bleak choices of endlessly sending American forces into harms way on the one hand, or withdrawing and seeing played out the bloodbath that we engendered on the other, I salute Joe Biden for coming up with a third alternative.
Topics: Democrats, Iraq, Joe Biden |