From the question and answer session after Clark's YearlyKos Keynote:
Audience member: You called for one of the hopes for Iraq to hold together. Serious people in foreign policy thinking, some of them believe that that's actually one of the impossibilities at this point in terms of Kurdish independence, Sunni-Shia splits, irreconcilable Sunni Ba'athists who are not going to reconcile to Shia dominance, et cetera, et cetera.
In terms of split, three-way split versus holding together and what influence we can have internationally in, with the international community for a settlement in that direction?GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, you have to be careful about the analogies with, with the Balkans. This is not quite like the Balkans. And so, I know a lot of people talk about this. They say, 'Look, you guys separated, you stopped the war in, in Bosnia. You stopped all this. You separated..' I-it's a little bit different. It's different because the Balkans is not the Middle East. These issues are more complicated. there's oil involved here. There's different populations. There's powerful neighbors who are at odds with each other, and the populations aren't actually separated. So, you're right in that there are fracture lines that you can see forming. You know the Shias mostly have the South and they want it. And the Kurds mostly have the North, but they don't have Kirkuk, and they're prepared to fight Kirkuk. I don't know if you saw the, the Bob Novak piece on the weekend that said we're going to run a special operation inside the Kurdish area to eliminate the PKK guerrillas in combination with Turkish Special Forces. And THAT'll make us really popular there. (laughter) And, and you've got Iran, Turkey.. i-i- This may well be what happens, but
I would hate to see the United States propose it and have to worry about implementing it, because it'll be one more recipe for conflict. There's no simple mechanistic way out of this. This is about human dynamics. It's about engagement. It's about changing people's minds. It's about Westernization over a period of time, and it can't be done in isolation in Iraq. You've got to reach out to Iraq's neighbors.http://securingamerica.com/node/2601It may be the last thing we need is a President (or even a candidate) proposing what Biden is proposing, because it's a recipe for failure, and the U.S. will be blamed for the consequences. Eventhough failure may well be the end state, we should not be promoting failure. Thoughts?
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