Let me start off with something at jump street:
There. Is. No. Perfect. Solution. To. Iraq.
Let's be crystal clear on that. There's no magic bullet, no rabbits in the hat, that's going to make everything nice and tidy tomorrow.
Still, I support (with reservations and modifications)
Joe Biden's idea as presented in the NY Times Article.
I realize this is not a popular idea here at Kos.
Biden's ideas have met with considerable ridicule, and to
be sure it's got flaws.
But I support the idea of a partitioned Iraq on three points:
1) We could begin troop downsizing and lessen the cost of the war
2) We could begin the "Islamification" of Iraq (see below)
3) No one, least of all Chimpy, has any better ideas
Biden's plan is not original, and other people have made the same argument.
Of course, as
Mash's diary there are defenciencies, and I will examine both.
But first to understand where we're going in Iraq, we have to understand where the country has been. Between WWI and 1958, the British exercised control over the region, then after a series of revolutions and coups over twenty years, Saddam comes in.
From Slate April 2004 by Timothy Noah
(entire article well-worth reading:)
Ralph Peters, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who writes on military strategy, has been calling for the breakup of Iraq for nearly a year.
"The Iraq we're trying to herd back together," Peters wrote in July 2003, "consists of three distinct nations caged under a single, bloodstained flag." Iraq was famously invented in 1921 by Winston Churchill, then the British colonial secretary tasked with carving up the recently defeated Ottoman Empire. Churchill's main concern was to consolidate areas containing, or suspected to contain, oil fields. He achieved that at the expense of long-term political stability. From the start, mistrust existed between the country's three predominant groups: the Shiite Arabs in the south, the Sunni Arabs in the middle, and the Kurds, who weren't Arabs at all, in the north. A succession of regimes managed to yoke these three groups together only through varying degrees of repression, with Saddam's the most repressive of all. Short of putting a tanned, rested, and ready Saddam back in charge--a possibility we can surely rule out--government by repression is no longer an option.
Imagine Jay Leno inviting Brad, Angelina and Jennifer on the
show on the exact same night.
And now civil war has broken out between the Sunnis and Shiites, and other conflicts are probably coming. Iraq as it stands is FUBAR, thanks to Bu$hCo's utter ineptitude and ignorance of history.
Partitioning or "Balkanizing" the region can give some release and lessent the tension of the situation. Biden's plan is good, however I have issues with his 5th Step:
Fifth, under an international or United Nations umbrella, we should convene a regional conference to pledge respect for Iraq's borders and its federal system. For all that Iraq's neighbors might gain by picking at its pieces, each faces the greater danger of a regional war. A "contact group" of major powers would be set up to lean on neighbors to comply with the deal.
NO. NOT THE UN. Rather we need to start the "Islamification" of the region. We are seen as invaders and occupiers with the goals of getting the oil, importing Christianity and Western Culture and fortifying Israel's position in the region. What we need to do is organize a council of Muslim/Arabic powers in the area (actually, we should have done this right after 9/11) a body consisting of representatives from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Qatar, Egypt, the UAE, Bahrain, and maybe -- maybe -- the Palestinians as well. (Seat at the table = getting on their good side?).
This would have the effect of proving our intentions of simply removing a threat and not taking over. These nations would provide police/army training, $$$, and oversight for the rebuilding of Iraq, and Afghanistan too. Once insurgents see more Islamic faces and less White, Western ones, their ability to recruit will be blunted.
(yes, this introduces new problems 'cuz a lot of the guys I just mentioned have problems of their own, and do we really want Egypt teaching these guys how to do police work? Yikes!)
There is also the Oil Issue which Mash brought up the other day, which Biden doesn't address. Yes, profits from the oil need to be divvied up in a way that is fair to Sunni, Shiite and Kurd alike.
Ivan Eland, author of the excellent book THE EMPIRE HAS NO CLOTHES: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed
had this to say on the subject back in May 2004:
Iraqi self-determination would probably result in the partitioning of Iraq or at least the creation of a loose confederation in which the Kurds, Sunni and Shia would autonomously govern their own affairs. Had the Clinton administration allowed the partitioning of multi-ethnic Bosnia, the United States and other nations would probably not be saddled with the task of keeping the peace in this continuing tinderbox nine years after the Dayton Accords were signed. If the peacekeepers withdrew today, the fighting among Bosnia's ethnic groups would probably resume.
By adopting self-determination for Iraqis, the administration would have to give up its fantasy that the artificial state of Iraq should be whole and democratic in the western sense. Self-determination would deal with the root causes of the insurgency and give the guerrilla groups some incentive to stop fighting and to refrain from causing a civil war.
The Sunni guerrillas are fighting less to bring back Saddam Hussein than repel a foreign invader and prevent paybacks from its elected Shiite government. The Shia, who make up 60 percent of the Iraqi population, have suffered years of oppression under the Sunni minority, and would likely win any Iraq-wide election.
And of course as we know, the Sunnis are disputing the results of the Dec 2005 election. And on and on it goes...
So Biden's solution is a good one. Not great but good. It provides us with a starting point for a solution to Cheney/Rumsfeld's brain-dead geopolitics. Iraq is at a crisis point. The Taliban has returned to Afghanistan. Trouble with Iran looms. Bin Laden is still on the loose.
They have screwed things up so magnificently, there can be no easy solution at this point.* Partition isn't the whole answer, but we have to understand something right now. If you agree with nothing else in this diary, you have to agree There Is No Perfect Solution. There just isn't. Pulling out every US solider tomorrow isn't, nor is staying there for 20 years or so.
(FINAL NOTE: Of course a successful partition plan presupposes that the Bush Administration can actually pull it off with any degree of competence which is a long shot. I guess point number 6 in Biden's plan is "Partition Plan to be Implemented AFTER Jan 20, 2009")