Anyone Else Think That Biden's Iraq Plan Is The Only One That Will Work?

Biden is the only one with a constructive idea, to break Iraq into three autonomous regions and share oil revenue. Is this such a bad idea? Why is it getting zero support?

It is a crime how the MSM is ignoring Biden. He is our most thoughtful voice on foreign affairs.

but I really wonder if they would?

The Kurds and the Shiites want it.
And the Sunni's are split but moving towards it.

(in a studio setting, no media possible.) I won't say I have proof that Iraqis do support a "partition" solution or that I'm always current on the news, but I just hadn't heard that this solution was advocated by anybody but outsiders looking for solutions.

On its face though, I agree with Biden on its merits, and agree that nobody else is forwarding very feasible ideas.

Constitution.
So at that time, that is what they said they wanted.

Thanks for the info. It would be encouraging for something to happen to their (the Iraqis') country that they WANTED for a change, after the hell that's been brought upon them.

Once the various regions are ethnically cleansed, the Shiites and Kurds have no incentive to share the oil revenue with the Sunnis.

The Iraqis are doing it themselves.
That is why Anbar Province is so successful.

And you know what makes me sooooo angry - is that he was saying this over 1 year ago.
How many people have died in the last year?

The support for his plan is growing.
Richardson, Obama and Edwards have all praised it. (Obama will present his plan tomorrow)

Believe it or not those "little brown people" have kicked invaders out for centuries. Further, given that Iraq and Iran recently finished a bloody war, I seriously doubt there will be any Iranian take over.

It's time to GIVE THEIR COUNTRY BACK TO THEM.

Yes, the civil war will be horrific, but it is INEVITABLE and must be sorted out BY THE NATIVES for a lasting peace. This is NO PLACE for FOREIGN empire builders.

Redeploy our troops NOW!!!

If we don't we will rape our Treasury and BE FORCED to eventually draw down. THEN, we will decide to leave when we are physically kicked out. Now that's dishonor and the only WINNERS are the corporations who comprise the Military Industrial Complex. Welcome to the USA Police State Machine? :nuke:

Just as Bin Laden planned.

Edward Joseph: Edward Joseph from here at SAIS. I served about a decade in the Balkans and know first-hand how much your leadership meant to that region.

And, um General, I appreciate very much with respect to your remarks about Iraq, I appreciate very much the fact that you say we need a retrospective look and I think that that is uh…refreshing, quite refreshing to hear that. Of course we still do have to look forward and you’ve alluded to and presented some of your own vision of how we move forward in that region and you mentioned the Dayton Agreement and that’s where I’d like to turn the discussion with respect to Iraq and mention that I’m co-author with Michael O’Hanlon of Brookings of the forthcoming proposal, a soft partition, a detailed proposal along the lines of Senator Biden, uh…what he has proposed.

And given your experience in the Balkans, extensive as it was, both Dayton and Kosovo, but especially in Bosnia, and you know very well General that when we went to Dayton it wasn’t open-ended as you said, there were principles, we had a clear vision of our own political settlement that…that we had in mind, and obviously there was extensive negotiations.

What do you think about the idea of a Bosnia-style, acknowledging as we do the many differences between Bosnia and Iraq and there are many, but that kind of approach which is fundamentally different from the course that we’re on now? And if I could just…you mentioned Russia and of course your long-standing experience in the Balkans, if you might say a word about Kosovo and current Russian tactics to obstruct that.


GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, thanks very much for the question and the comments. I…I have reservations about the partition approach in Iraq. I’ll tell you why.

In the Balkans first of all, we started with a rapid military offensive…I shouldn’t say “we”…the Serbs and the Bosnians fought a rapid military offensive in the summer of ’92 that overran, with the Bosnian Serb army, much of Bosnia and with some amazing miracles, the front more or less stabilized and so in the 1994 period Ambassador Charles Redman led an effort to put together a peace plan that was based on a 51/49 division of the country and basically that confirmed the status quo.

And so the idea was just to stop the fighting along the current lines because they figured that neither side was going to give in on what it rightly claimed when we went forward in ’95 with our plan. We basically took up where the Redman plan left off.

I think that’s different than where we are today in the Balkans and um, it may well be, when all is said and done, there are different political entities in some kind of a federated structure, very loosely controlled, but as an American, I wouldn’t want to be proposing it. It might emerge out of a dialogue that I described to the gentleman from the Voice of America, but it’s got to be the Iraqis’ idea, not ours.

I don’t think a gimmick solves the problem.

I think, if you look at the history of partitions, they tend to be accompanied by intense fighting, bitter feelings afterwards, and longstanding problems such as between India and Pakistan that persist to this day, in some respects as a result of the partition idea.

The idea that you can sort of draw a line…I sat with the Bosnian Serbs, Muslims and the Croats after we had initialed the Dayton Agreement and Richard Holbrook had left and come back, he had other business in New York, and I was there with these three guys and we looked at the map and they said ‘you know, General, it’s very good you’ve drawn this line but this line on the ground is three kilometers wide - your pencil mark on this map is three kilometers wide – this is my cousin’s home and his orchard that’s under your line…it needs to be in…’ and so we went through the whole thousand kilometers of this on a pictal map, farm by farm, village by village, road intersection by road intersection, and only with the three people there that did it.

Could a process like that eventually emerge, could the United States be a sort of arbiter of this?

Certainly we could, but is it a gimmick that if the United States goes and proposes it, the people on the ground say ‘ah, oh God, you’ve taken us out from our misery – this is the exact thing we need. Yes. Let’s give the Kurds their piece and you Sunnis, you take Anbar - it’s a beautiful place out there. You can have it, we’ll keep the oil here in central Bosnia, don’t worry, the check’s in the mail, you’ll get it every month, it’ll be deposited in the Iraqi central bank and by the way there will be a federal assembly. Thanks very much. Okay, we’re going to now turn in our arms’ and no.

It’s beyond…it’s beyond belief that something like this could work.

I think, though, that if you took it over there and you listen to what the Iraqis say and it emerges as their idea, if they commit to it, if their principal leaders see it as their solution, then I think that’s fine, I’d have no problem endorsing it – I’d rather see an integral Iraq because I think it’s better for the security of the region, but if that’s the only thing they can accept for their own internal political dynamics, fine. Um, I understand why people are proposing it, um, and I have reservations. I wouldn’t propose it.

http://securingamerica.com/node/2425

no one has suggested it. Other candidates have been embracing his plan. The Neocons don't want it because their plan is to privatize the oil and meanwhile, the war profiteers are making a bundle.

to serve the will of their constituents. If they don't stop this war - Kick as many of the war-mongering bums out come 2008, 2010, 2012.

No more wars for PROFIT! The only winners are the corporations within the Military Industrial Complex.

Do we want to continue to see our tax dollars PISSED away to those who promote DEATH and DESTRUCTION?!?

Once the lines start getting drawn on the map, members of sects that are soon to be minorities in their new regions are going to face a lot of pressure. The result could be a smaller version of what happened in India after the British pulled out and East and West Pakistan were carved out of the Raj. Millions were refugees and there was a lot of violence. There were also tensions between the successor states that exist today.

over 1 year ago.

5. The Plan is an answer to the problem of mixed cities.

Large cities with mixed populations present a challenge under any plan now being considered. The essence of the Plan is that mixed populations can only live together peacefully if their leadership is truly satisfied with the overall arrangement. If so, that leadership will help keep the peace in the cities. At the same time, we would make Baghdad a federal city, and buttress the protection of minorities there and in the other mixed cities with an international peacekeeping force. Right now, the prospect for raising such a force is small. But following a political settlement, an international conference and the establishment of a Contact Group, others are more likely to participate, including countries like Saudi Arabia which have offered peacekeepers in the past.

http://planforiraq.com/download

Just various degrees of bad. If the Iraqi's like it, let them implement it.

I am continually disappointed in the unrealistic, uninspired, over-simplistic, red-meat-to-the-liberal-base "plans" the other candidates offer. Biden is the only one who has anything close to a practical plan on Iraq and other foreign policy issues.