Colleagues advise Biden to put away Iraq carving knife

[ECH1969]

Congressional Democrats yesterday shied away from Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s call to divide Iraq into three regions to make way for a U.S. troop withdrawal by 2008.

Mr. Kerry, who ran for president in 2004, said he prefers holding a summit to craft the right solution for Iraq.

Actress and anti-war activist Susan Sarandon, on Capitol Hill for a Christopher Reeve Foundation rally, also was skeptical of Mr. Biden's proposal.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, called Mr. Biden "very wise" but said his idea "sounds like a challenge that could lead to other challenges."

Link

[electropop]

1. Which piece did Bush promise to give ol' Joe?

The piece where they process the credit cards?

[The Magistrate]

2. Sen. Biden, Sir

Is simply outlining what the end result is going to be: the only questions in the matter relate to amount of bloodshed, and schedule. There is some wisdom in decreeing the inevitable a little in advance, for it can be readily mistaken for control and power.

The fact is there is not going to be a unitary state of Iraq without a ruthless dictatorship at its center, and there is no more natural reason there should be then there ever was there should be a unitary Yugoslavia. The place is a patched together colonial district, not a nation, and by any reasopnable view consists of three quite seperate peoples, each of which has some genuine national characteristics. A federal structure so loose as to be essentially meaningless, like the early U.S. under the Articles of Confederation, or the old Holy Roman Empire, would be barely tolerable by these constituent elements in a condition of settled peace, but anything more can only be achieved by one faction gaining military dominance over the others, and pushing that advantage to the necessary lengths of oppression to secure quiesence.

This solution is not popular with conventional geo-political fellows, and it will certainly be destabilizing to the region. But as it is the natural consequence of destroying the Baghdad regime in place for the last seventy-odd years by invasion, it is really a little late for such qualms. This certain outcome of destroying the central regime and allowing a lapse into anarchy was simply one of many excellent reasons for refraining from invasion in the first place.

[ECH1969]

3. No way

All the oil is in the south of Iraq and the North of Iraq. If the country breaks into three the Kurds are going to get divided up by the Iranians and the Turks.

And, the Sunnis and Shia are going to fight a very bloody war for the oil in the south. The Sunnis will never let themselves be cut off from the oil. In the end Iran will probably take over the southern Iraq and the oil fields.

[napi21]

4. That's not the way I understand Biden's plan.

He wants to have a central Gov't, similar to our Feds, and three "states" the Kurds, Shia, and Suni. The central Gov't would nationalize the oil so it would in fact belong to all three states equally, but each state could rule themselves as they wished. If one wanted a theocracy, one wanted to be secular, and the third...who knows, but they could each do their own thing.

I honestly think something like that could work!

[rodeodance]

5. yes, your outline is the basic way Biden laid it out. And it should be

given a chance to be heard.

[Sufi Marmot]

6. Not if the US/EU does a lot of arm twisting...

And I mean a LOT of arm twisting...I can envision a plausible scenario a few years hence where Turkey grudgingly allows for an Iraqi "Kurdistan" under the condition that Turkey's entrance into the EU is expedited and that its present borders remain inviolable. The US would have to convince Iraqi Kurds to squelch any Kurdish terrorist activities across the border with Turkey. The US would ostensibly defend Kurdistan from Iranian depredations. The status of Kirkuk and the Turkmen would have to be settled.

Kurds living in Turkey would have to abandon their dream of a "Greater Kurdistan" (sorry kids, Diyabakir isn't going to be your capital after all...) in exchange for the chance to emigrate to an independent Iraqi Kurdistan - given the grinding poverty that many Turkish Kurds live in, perhaps many would jump at the chance to seek better opportunities in an economically thriving free Iraqi Kurdistan. At least they would have a choice - living as Kurds in the Turkish Republic or as Kurdish citizens in independent Iraqi Kurdistan. Various local strongmen and mid-level "entrepeneurs" on both sides of the Turkey-Kurdistan border would have to be paid off or otherwise convinced to give up the widespread smuggling that occurs there.

I don't know...I think it's probably too much to hope for without a lot of ethnic violence or dislocated people. But I'm not sure that the alternative - maintaining the status quo with increasingly restive Kurds fomenting unrest and engaging in terrorism in Turkey is any better...

-SM

[The Magistrate]

7. It Will Indeed be Destabilizing, Sir

But it is going to occur in some form nonetheless.

The Sunnis lack the power to prevail against the Shia: it is a question of numbers, and God is on the side of the bigger battalions, which are the Shia. Sunnis will be killed until the survivors acquiesce. They cannot successfully invade and occupy the Shia regions on their own, and no power will assist them sufficiently to make a difference.

Certainly the Kurdish dream is of an independent state that includes not only part of current Iraq, but swathes of Anatolia and Persia and even Syria, and this is regarded with great hostility by the other countries that would loose territory to it. But neither Turkish nor Iranian success in suppression of it is fore-ordained, by a long sight. There now exists a reasonably effecttive Kurdish armed force, fostered under the occupation regime, and it will have potential sources of revenue never before available to Kurdish irridentism owing to its control of the oil fields around Mosul and Kirkuk.

It is certainly possible a Shia state may become an Iranian satillite. It is also possible the Shia Arabs in the west of Iran will press violently to join it, in rebellion against Persians. That is a very old antagonism it is unwise to undervalue. Such a development would deprive Iran of a great deal of its oil.

In any case, it does not matter what the consequences may be: the de facto partition of Iraq is already well under way, and the sort of sham political posturing currently going on the confines of the Green Zone proclaimed as an Iraqi government is not going to alter it.

[Sufi Marmot]

8. I can't imagine Turkey giving up existing territory...

Any political solution that requires Turkey to give up land isn't going to happen. Ataturk's dictum about wanting nothing more and accepting nothing less than the land that comprises modern Turkey is pretty well ingrained in modern Turks, especially so within Turkey's military officials I would imagine.

-SM

[The Magistrate]

11. It Was Not My Intent To Suggest, Sir, Turkey Would Give It Up

But the Kurds definitely want it. They will try for it, and the loss of it, or some of it, could well be a consequence of an attempt by Turkey to suppress an independent Kurdish area that fails.

My analysis here, by the way, should not be taken as indicating a favorable view towards the predicted outcome; it is simply one illustration of my long conviction there can be no favorable result from what the current U.S. regime has done in Iraq.

[Sufi Marmot]

12. Point taken...

I suspect we're more or less on the same page. I personally would like to see an independent Kurdistan carved out of Northern Iraq, and it would be nice in, say, 5-10 years if Turkey and the Iraqi Kurdish leadership could be made to sit down at the table and discuss ways to make it happen in a way that Turkey can live with. It wouldn't surprise me if an Iraqi Kurdistan actually turned out to be benefical to Turkey economically (cheap(er) fuel, increased markets for Turkish goods, etc.) And I also have a hunch that an independent Iraqi Kurdistan might actually reduce tenions in southeast Turkey if a lot of the younger Kurds emigrated there.

I don't see the Kurds ever mounting a serious conventional challenge to the Turkish military, which will come down hard if they sense that Turkish territorial integrity is being threatened. But they can certainly make life miserable via terrorism and civil unrest. So, yeah, the current situation isn't tenable in the long term.

-SM

[The Magistrate]

15. That We Seem To Be, Sir

A pleasure to discuss the matter with you!

[w4rma]

9. The more I read about Biden's plan, the more I like it. (nt)

[Kiouni]

10. this is why

i started looking on du tonight i was reading about this and it seemed to display a kind of rowanda end. were the government of a different country tells the people their all different. are we sure this is such a good idea?

[Pacifist Patriot]

13. Shades of Yugoslavia?

[Mass]

14. I am with Kerry and Harkin on that - You cant dictate that on your own.

You can't just do it; you have to arrive at agreements to do it," said Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat. "That requires diplomacy and symmetry."
Sen. Tom Harkin, Iowa Democrat, agreed.
"The facts are that Iraq has always been three regions. I'm not certain that we can dictate that to them," he said. "We always get into trouble when we try to dictate a solution. Perhaps we can work with other countries to set up frameworks, but it's really going to have to be up to them.

I heard him a few minutes ago bragging that he could meddle better than Bush, and that it was good for the Iraqis.

In addition, it requires that the troops stay at least until 2008.

[BuyingThyme]

16. Who are these fuckers to decide? Iraq is not some kind of moron colony.