Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., and Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, argued in an op-ed piece for The New York Times that the American people must move past the idea that our only two options in Iraq are “staying the course” and “bringing the troops home now.” The two presented a five-step alternative:
“The idea, as in Bosnia, is to maintain a united Iraq by decentralizing it, giving each ethno-religious group — Kurd, Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab — room to run its own affairs, while leaving the central government in charge of common interests. We could drive this in place with irresistible sweeteners for the Sunnis to join in, a plan designed by the military for withdrawing and redeploying American forces, and a regional nonaggression pact.”
Posted by Melissa Cooley
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28 Comments
Ummm, has Biden or Gelb not heard that Iraq has its own government and is empowered to make its own decisions about such things?
Geez, the same hypocrites who say we are acting like conquering imperialists are now suggesting that we tell the Iraqis how to run their affairs.
Ah yes, we are once again treated to the usual intellectual dishonesty and moral ineptitude of the left.
Nice try, Rhonda; but the idea has already bombed. Even the Sunnis don’t lke it.
You mentioned Bosnia, which reminds me –when the hell are we going to get our troops out of Clinton’s war there?
Or have the hypocritical liars of the left already conveniently forgotten their own trail of international swashbuckling?
Huh, the Kurds can have the North, the sunni the middle and the shiites the South…The central government could be in Bagdad! Where have I heard that before? Or maybe it was mixed another way?
Maybe retro is in again I loved those bell bottom jeans! What has been said is the more things change the more they stay the same. Oh well it worked so well the first time it might again.
Terry I wonder that too, how long must we stay when the cause was just. Compare to how long we have to stay when the cause was us?
Good point writerdog.
I guess the media doesn’t read it’s own stuff. They seem to recycle a lot of the same things every, what, 2 – 3 years or so?.or so?.or so?
Actually, Terry, this is Melissa’s thread. But never mind.
The only thing that is going to happen in Iraq is total chaos once we withdraw. It matters nothing what we do there. This country has been fighting itself. as well as its neighbors, for centuries. Why would they change now?
We had no business going in there in the first palce and we have no business staying there now. Bring our citizens home and let those idiots blow themselves up in the name of Allah, or whomever they want to blow themselves up believing in.
I totally disagree with decentralizing Iraq.
If you split them up, they will remain split forever. You have to keep them together as to allow them to build relationships with one another and being the healing and tolerance they need to be civil.
They have already started forming their government and things are moving in the right direction.
Joe Williams,
Judging from current situation, I don’t know how much more ‘moving in the right direction’ Iraq can take.
Terry,
‘Intellectual dishonesty and moral ineptitude of the Left?’ Really? Folks around here know that I’m no fan of Biden. But if you really want to insist on the fiction of an Iraqi government ‘empowered to make its own decisions,’ I would like to hear your response to this same government’s unsuccessful efforts to limit the scope of U.S. power, and the length of the U.S.’s stay in Iraq–efforts that the Bush White House has resolutely ignored, and continues to ignore.
If you want to run your mouth about ‘intellectual dishonesty and moral ineptitude’ of the Left, you may want to recall the Bush Administration’s deliberate falsification of intelligence and dismissal of its own intelligence findings that Iraq did not possess WMD. You may also want to think about the widespread use of torture and the effect it has had on the national psyche and our standing abroad.
Given their recent history, Wingnuts should be careful about trying to invoke moral justifications against much of anybody.
But this is really beside the point. Partition has been on the drawing board since day one. Obviously. The SAS (Special Air Services) has been caught in black ops designed to forment sectarian strife and civil war. I have no doubt this is the game that’s being played. Partition the country out, divide and conquer, so that the oil reserves are protected by a reduced state apparatus and ripe to be plucked for U.S. needs.
That’s what this is really about. That’s what this was always really about.
We’re not occupying Iraq? Tell that to the troops there and to the occupied Iraqis who are resisting.
Yes, this is a recycled idea. “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” sure as hell ain’t working!
Every plan has to be tailored to fit Zionist Israel, which started this thing to begin with, after Ariel Sharon made 8 trips to Washington to tie the strings onto his Pinocchio puppet Bush.
The Iraqis want the United States gone and for us to take the Zionist part of Israel with us when we leave.
Not all that hard to understand if you’ve a mind to.
Yeah Ben, three years since Commander Codpiece trumpeted “mission accomplished”.
SO… why are we not out of there if the mission was accomplished three years ago?
I thought democrats were supposed to be integraters, not segregators.
Oh right, its okay for the brown people in the mid-east to be segregated….but for whites and blacks – no way.
Hypocracy of biden is hilarious.
segregation is wrong in all ways…
except the segregation of the zionists from the rest of the world — right Ed?
captain_poindexter
You’re a funny sort. Zionists murder children everyday, so the “right, Ed? is right-on.
You Zionist suck-ups give me the creeps. You’re fascination with murdering children is really sick, but you don’t see it that way, right captain_poindexter?
Iraq was a made up country form its creation. Only a strongman like Saddam Hussein kept it from descending into anarchy.
The 3 state approach has at least as good a chance at success as what is being tried now.
If anyone thinks the US is operating in the long term best interests of the Iraqi people, I can show you some other countries the US “helped” with their governmental difficulties. None of them turned out particularaly well.
Iraq was one of those. But the situation is different now for Iraq. I think there is not (currently) intention of forming a government there that does not require the presence of US troops to operate. It’s not a nice place to stay but we don’t want to leave.
But just for the sake of arguement…..
We should withdraw our troops, gurantee the borders of the nation known as Iraq from external incursion, and see what happens.
Zionist Israel says no.
The Zionists are now touring Europe threatening to kill any leader which offers to help feed the Palestinians { targeted assassination }.
The Zionists new kick: It’s cheaper to starve the Palestinians than to shoot their children. Plus you get to travel all around Europe at American taxpayer expense.
{ link to follow }
Democratically elected Hamas wants peace. What an awful thing for the Zionists?
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/712083.html
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/712090.html
All you Zionists run and hide when ole Ed starts posting the truth. That is with the exception of a smart remark now and then.
I’m having so much fun watching you all squirm. It’s neat.
Well, I’ve turned over just about every rock I can find and no Zionists crawl out from underneath, so where are you hiding?
Any plan that includes getting our troops out of Iraq or at the very least decreasing our presence in that country sure beats the hell out of the Stay-the-Course Plan.
Thank you RD, That oughta flush-out some of them. If not only for the fact that I’m in agreement.
Maybe if I sing it would help. That’s pretty bad.
I mean really awful.
We need to sneak-out a night and leave Halliburton there.
That is called justice.
Thanks for the excellent smack-down of Terry, CF.
You really have to torture logic to get from Bush’s “mushroom cloud over an American city any minute now” to “the usual intellectual dishonesty and moral ineptitude of the left.”
Of the LEFT?
By the way, one can be “inept” in how they DO something, like organize a war in Iraq or save lives after a hurricane, say.
But one can’t be morally inept, because morals are a belief system.
Maybe instead of “moral ineptitude” you were thinking of “moral turpitude.”
Anyway, Terry, you used “ineptitude” ineptly.
The last election in Iraq was a resounding success because Iraqis turned out to vote for parties that vowed to rid the country of the scourge of American occupation.
Funny how we never get told WHAT the Iraqis were voting for? Nor are we told how we keep installing puppet leaders to forestall the will of the majority there.
Think about it–Bush countermanded the will of the majority in election 2000. If he does it here, why wouldn’t he do it there?
General Odom has it right, we need to withdraw, now!
Cut and Run? You Bet.By Lt. Gen. William E. OdomForeign Policy
May/June 2006 Issue
Why America must get out of Iraq now.Withdraw immediately or stay the present course? That is the key question about the war in Iraq today. American public opinion is now decidedly against the war. From liberal New England, where citizens pass town-hall resolutions calling for withdrawal, to the conservative South and West, where more than half of “red state” citizens oppose the war, Americans want out. That sentiment is understandable.
The prewar dream of a liberal Iraqi democracy friendly to the United States is no longer credible. No Iraqi leader with enough power and legitimacy to control the country will be pro-American. Still, U.S. President George W. Bush says the United States must stay the course. Why? Let’s consider his administration’s most popular arguments for not leaving Iraq.
If we leave, there will be a civil war. In reality, a civil war in Iraq began just weeks after U.S. forces toppled Saddam. Any close observer could see that then; today, only the blind deny it. Even President Bush, who is normally impervious to uncomfortable facts, recently admitted that Iraq has peered into the abyss of civil war. He ought to look a little closer. Iraqis are fighting Iraqis. Insurgents have killed far more Iraqis than Americans. That’s civil war.
Withdrawal will encourage the terrorists. True, but that is the price we are doomed to pay. Our continued occupation of Iraq also encourages the killers-precisely because our invasion made Iraq safe for them. Our occupation also left the surviving Baathists with one choice: Surrender, or ally with al Qaeda. They chose the latter. Staying the course will not change this fact. Pulling out will most likely result in Sunni groups’ turning against al Qaeda and its sympathizers, driving them out of Iraq entirely.
Before U.S. forces stand down, Iraqi security forces must stand up. The problem in Iraq is not military competency; it is political consolidation. Iraq has a large officer corps with plenty of combat experience from the Iran-Iraq war. Moktada al-Sadr’s Shiite militia fights well today without U.S. advisors, as do Kurdish pesh merga units. The problem is loyalty. To whom can officers and troops afford to give their loyalty? The political camps in Iraq are still shifting. So every Iraqi soldier and officer today risks choosing the wrong side. As a result, most choose to retain as much latitude as possible to switch allegiances. All the U.S. military trainers in the world cannot remove that reality. But political consolidation will. It should by now be clear that political power can only be established via Iraqi guns and civil war, not through elections or U.S. colonialism by ventriloquism.
Setting a withdrawal deadline will damage the morale of U.S. troops. Hiding behind the argument of troop morale shows no willingness to accept the responsibilities of command. The truth is, most wars would stop early if soldiers had the choice of whether or not to continue. This is certainly true in Iraq, where a withdrawal is likely to raise morale among U.S. forces. A recent Zogby poll suggests that most U.S. troops would welcome an early withdrawal deadline. But the strategic question of how to extract the United States from the Iraq disaster is not a matter to be decided by soldiers. Carl von Clausewitz spoke of two kinds of courage: first, bravery in the face of mortal danger; second, the willingness to accept personal responsibility for command decisions. The former is expected of the troops. The latter must be demanded of high-level commanders, including the president.
Withdrawal would undermine U.S. credibility in the world. Were the United States a middling power, this case might hold some water. But for the world’s only superpower, it’s patently phony. A rapid reversal of our present course in Iraq would improve U.S. credibility around the world. The same argument was made against withdrawal from Vietnam. It was proved wrong then and it would be proved wrong today. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the world’s opinion of the United States has plummeted, with the largest short-term drop in American history. The United States now garners as much international esteem as Russia. Withdrawing and admitting our mistake would reverse this trend. Very few countries have that kind of corrective capacity. I served as a military attaché in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow during Richard Nixon’s Watergate crisis. When Nixon resigned, several Soviet officials who had previously expressed disdain for the United States told me they were astonished. One diplomat said, “Only your country is powerful enough to do this. It would destroy my country.”
Two facts, however painful, must be recognized, or we will remain perilously confused in Iraq. First, invading Iraq was not in the interests of the United States. It was in the interests of Iran and al Qaeda. For Iran, it avenged a grudge against Saddam for his invasion of the country in 1980. For al Qaeda, it made it easier to kill Americans. Second, the war has paralyzed the United States in the world diplomatically and strategically. Although relations with Europe show signs of marginal improvement, the trans-Atlantic alliance still may not survive the war. Only with a rapid withdrawal from Iraq will Washington regain diplomatic and military mobility. Tied down like Gulliver in the sands of Mesopotamia, we simply cannot attract the diplomatic and military cooperation necessary to win the real battle against terror. Getting out of Iraq is the precondition for any improvement.
In fact, getting out now may be our only chance to set things right in Iraq. For starters, if we withdraw, European politicians would be more likely to cooperate with us in a strategy for stabilizing the greater Middle East. Following a withdrawal, all the countries bordering Iraq would likely respond favorably to an offer to help stabilize the situation. The most important of these would be Iran. It dislikes al Qaeda as much as we do. It wants regional stability as much as we do. It wants to produce more oil and gas and sell it. If its leaders really want nuclear weapons, we cannot stop them. But we can engage them.
None of these prospects is possible unless we stop moving deeper into the “big sandy” of Iraq. America must withdraw now.
——–
Lt. Gen. William E. Odom (Ret.) is senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and professor at Yale University. He was director of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988.http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050206B.shtml
Viva La Raza Blanco!!!
A man like Odom stands head and shoulders above the pack of feral boys occupying the White House.
CF,You’re right on target. While the thought of a military not being governed by a Civilian Authority is scary, when you look at what the First Fool and his ilk have done, it makes you really wonder.
What America? Bring our American soliders home and let the CFR Center of Foriegn Relations fight their own war! We need to fight for America. Not defend the one world government that wants to tear it down!
The CFR wants to dummy America down to being any third world nation. Open boarders. Fake wars to create bases in the middle east. Reduce funding to education. Failing to have a national plan for energy independance. Its all the new world order and it all points to the CFR. Bring the troops home. Restore funding education. Make an energy plan a priority. Quit paying taxes to support an agenda that tears America down.
Uncle Sam
I don’t foresee pan-nationalism becoming reality anytime within the next thousand years, what with the uber-nationalism everyone has for their own countries. As long as people are fighting wars against each other, the One World State will forever be a myth.