This is Joel from the official campaign blog. Mike Boyer at Foreign Policy Magazine's Passport blog had an interesting post last night, highlighting some surprising comments from the president about progress in Iraq.
U.S. President George W. Bush has apparently decided that the path to victory lies in a plan devised more than a year ago by ... wait for it ... Democratic Sen. Joe Biden.
That's right, as the Wall Street Journal reports this morning, the "bottom-up" strategy Bush was touting in Anbar yesterday, "bears some striking similarities to the 'soft partition' strategy pushed by senior Democrats." The Journal is referring, of course, to the "unity through autonomy" (Times Select) plan floated by Biden and former Council on Foreign Relations Chairman Leslie Gelb in May 2006.
More after the jump.
Here is the full quote from Bush's recent speech to American soldiers in Iraq:
Earlier today I met with some of the tribal sheiks here in Anbar. It was a really interesting meeting. And at the table were the leaders of the central government, as well. They told me that the kind of bottom-up progress that your efforts are bringing to Anbar is vital to the success and stability of a free Iraq.
Here are some key excerpts from the Wall Street Journal's article (sorry, couldn't find a link to full text) that Boyer mentions:
The Bush administration is quietly moving toward a major shift in Iraq policy, driven by successes in formerly intractable insurgent strongholds combined with dispiriting failures at fostering national reconciliation.
After almost four years of trying to build Iraq's central government in Baghdad, the U.S. has found that what appears to work best in the divided country is just the opposite. So senior military officials are increasingly working to strengthen local players who are bringing some measure of stability to their communities. The new approach bears some striking similarities to the "soft partition" strategy pushed by senior Democrats, and suggests that despite the often bitter debate in Washington on Iraq policy, a broad consensus on how to move ahead in the war-torn country may be forming.
Some military officials say the local focus seems to be leading to an outcome that looks similar to the "soft partition" or federalism approach advocated by a growing number of Democrats, including Joseph Biden of Delaware, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a longshot candidate for president. Senior Bush administration officials, of course, have never used the phrase "soft partition." Instead President Bush and Defense Secretary Robert Gates often refer to the new approach as "bottom-up reconciliation."
Noting the irony of increasing support among Republicans for Senator Biden's plan for Iraq despite past Republican criticisms, Boyer writes:
Watching Republicans turn tail and support Biden's plan is as comical as it is tragic. Let's not forget just what conservatives said about Biden's plan back when he devised it.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan was certain that Biden's plan would doom Iraq to failure, saying the president supported only a "federal, democratic, pluralist and unified" Iraq. He added:
A partition government with regional security forces and a weak central government ... is something that no Iraqi leader has proposed and that the Iraqi people have not supported."
The feelings of the conservative intelligentsia were summarized by Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who told the Washington Times (no longer online) that Biden's plan was "virtually certain to make things worse, not better."
Helene Cooper actually mentioned this favorable shift toward Senator Biden's plan in a July article for the New York Times:
What he does have, that the other Democratic candidates don’t, is a coherent proposal for dealing with the debacle in Iraq that is increasingly picking up steam. Foreign policy analysts, Capitol Hill politicians and even officials in the Bush administration have started sounding positive notes.
"The truth is, we could end up close to the Biden-Gelb proposal," a senior administration official said, referring to the partition plan that Mr. Biden, along with Leslie Gelb, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, presented more than a year ago in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times.
Has President Bush finally read the Iraq Constitution, which calls for a de-centralized federal system in Section Five?
Unfortunately, it's become all too clear that this president plans on clinging to his fundamentally flawed policies in Iraq. In his concluding remarks to soldiers in Iraq:
But I want to tell you this about the decision — about my decision about troop levels. Those decisions will be based on a calm assessment by our military commanders on the conditions on the ground — not a nervous reaction by Washington politicians to poll results in the media.
It's too bad he didn't pay closer attention to the constitution four years ago.
As Senator Biden said in his response to President Bush's speech at the American Legion convention:
Absent an occupation which we cannot sustain or the return of a dictator which we cannot support, Iraq cannot be governed from the center at this point in its history.
There is no trust within the government, no trust of the government by the people, no capacity by the government to deliver security and services, and no prospect it will build that trust and capacity any time soon.
As everyone knows, I have offered a plan that contains the possibility, not the guarantee, of promoting stability in Iraq as we leave. It’s based on the reality that Iraq cannot be governed from the center.
Instead, we have to give its warring factions breathing room in their own regions, with control over the fabric of their daily lives – police, education, jobs, marriage, and religion.