If I were Joe Biden, I’d be pissed.
Not because he’s so low in polls of Democratic voters. Not because his son will be sent to Iraq next year to fight a war they both oppose. Not because the media has continually tried to paint him as an out-of-touch racist.
But I’d say each of those would tie as close-seconds.
I’d be pissed because Joe Biden has a plan to end the war in Iraq. By most standards (other than the World War II standard this administration has been working off of), his plan would be a victory for the United States and the people of Iraq. It has bipartisan support. It passed in the senate with 75 votes, including 26 Republicans. Biden, and those who are familiar with his plan know this is what will happen in Iraq eventually, anyway. It’s the only thing that can happen.
But Biden is a Democrat. And if Bush goes along with a Democratic idea, he will have lost the remaining 24 percent of American voters who actually support anything he’s doing. Because in my opinion, the only people who can still approve of Bush are the ones who would support anything he does – The Hannity base.
When Biden and the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Leslie Gelb, wrote their op/ed for the New York Times on May 1, 2006, three years after “Mission Accomplished”, the Bush administration immediately denounced the idea, arguing we must stay the course, which we have. And 2007 was, and continues to be the deadliest year for American forces in Iraq.
It can be argued, that because Bush insists he doesn’t read newspapers, he can’t be expected to not denounce the Biden plan, because it was in a newspaper – and an evil, socialist, paper of recorded liberalism at that.
So, if Mr. Bush missed the Biden plan when it was announced, I’d like to help him out, because I’m sure he frequents this website.
According to their op/ed titled, “Unity Through Autonomy in Iraq” Biden and Gelb iterate that their plan would “establish three largely autonomous regions” in Iraq – a Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish – “with a viable central government in Baghdad.”
As evidence, he cites the Dayton accords, which helped end the Bosnian conflict in 1995. He says the idea “kept the country whole by, paradoxically, dividing it into ethnic federations, even allowing Muslims, Croats and Serbs to retain separate armies.”
In 2005, those separate armies were disbanded and the central government is currently strengthening.
The central Baghdad government, Biden and Gelb say, “would control border defense, foreign affairs and oil revenues.”
They go on to say, “Baghdad would become a federal zone, while densely populated areas of mixed populations would receive both multisectarian and international police protection.”
In other words, a U.N. operation, similar to the one expressed by John Kerry before the Republicans and their allies in the media smeared him into a flip-flopping coward in 2004.
Biden and Gelb consider criticisms, which include calling the plan a partition, and saying the Iraqi constitution does not allow such a plan: “The Iraqi Constitution, in fact, already provides for a federal structure and a procedure for provinces to combine into regional governments…Each community supports federalism…The Shiites know they can dominate the government, but they can't defeat a Sunni insurrection. The Kurds will not give up their 15-year-old autonomy.”
The entire op/ed can be read at Here
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