Biden's Iraq Plan

[Dover]

Obama probably chose Biden in large part for his foreign policy experience/positions as well as
the fact that he seems in good graces with Israel (though I'm not clear on how many of his statements/policy plans on oil and energy are compatible w/ Israel's pipeline aspirations and geopolitical issues).


IF Biden is to be a major foreign policy influence going forward, it would behoove us to review his positions. So here are various views on his 'plan' for Iraq:



Biden's plan for Iraq as different from the other Dem candidates:
http://www.observer.com/node/36658


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Senate Overwhelmingly Backs Biden

WASHINGTON — The Senate passed a resolution Wednesday suggesting Baghdad limit the power of its federal government and give more control to Iraq's ethnically divided regions.

The 75-23 vote marked the first agreement on Iraq among lawmakers in months, although it would have little practical effect. Republicans agreed to swing behind the nonbinding measure after it was amended to make clear that Bush should press for a new federalized system only if the Iraqis want it.

Still, the resolution underscores a bipartisan longing in Congress for a fresh diplomatic approach in Iraq. It also was a victory for presidential hopeful Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., a primary sponsor of the resolution along with Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan.

Biden advocates establishing a power-sharing agreement among ethnic factions similar to the one established in Bosnia in the 1990s. The U.S. has focused too much on trying to prop up a strong, central unified government in Baghdad, he said.

"My view for over three years has been that will not happen in the lifetime of anyone in this room," Biden told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference.

It is unlikely the Bush administration will alter its policies on Iraq considering the resolution. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in a letter Tuesday that the administration supports a federal Iraq, but it is a "sensitive issue best left to the Iraqis to address at their own pace."..>

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070926/us-iraq-federalism/

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Unity Through Autonomy:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/01/opinion/01biden.html

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Biden's Son Headed For Iraq
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20316309/


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The “five point alternative plan” for Iraq put forward last week by Joseph R. Biden, the ranking Democrat member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, can best be described as a proposal for a sectarian bloodbath. He has joined others in the US political establishment whose solution to the catastrophe in Iraq is to tear the country apart along ethno-religious lines and—providing they collaborate with Washington—put anti-democratic regimes in power over the population.

Biden is a thoroughly pro-war figure. In 2002, he voted in the Congress to give Bush the authority to carry out the illegal invasion of Iraq. He has vehemently defended the White House’s criminal policy of preemptive wars. The Democrats as a whole have provided crucial support for the militarist agenda of the Bush administration. Biden’s main criticism of the Iraq war is that the White House did not send enough troops.

Three years after the invasion, Biden, like a growing layer in American ruling circles, is alarmed about the state of affairs in Iraq. The US military is bogged down fighting against anti-occupation insurgents. Over 20,000 troops have been killed or wounded, while the cost of the conflict is approaching $100 billion per year. There is no viable government in Baghdad and, far from the situation beginning to stabilise, the efforts of the Bush administration to weaken resistance by encouraging sectarian divisions have triggered fratricidal warfare between Sunni and Shiite extremists.

Biden’s concern, spelt out in an op-ed contribution in New York Times on May 1, is that the nightmare the Bush administration has created in Iraq is shattering domestic support for the war. He fears that the “frustration of Americans is mounting so fast that Congress might end up mandating a rapid pullout”. Such an eventuality would threaten what he considers “key security goals” of American imperialism. While Biden did not spell them out, those goals are US domination over the territory and oil and gas resources of the Middle East.

Biden’s solution to the disaster facing the United States is to split Iraq into three autonomous statelets within a loose federal structure. He advocates “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”. Alongside the de-facto Kurdish state that already exists in northern Iraq, he calls for the creation of a Shiite-controlled autonomous region in the oil-rich southern provinces and a Sunni Arab region in the central and western provinces.

The new Iraqi constitution that was drafted by pro-occupation Shiite and Kurdish parties and the US embassy enables such a partition to take place. It provides the mechanisms for the establishment of regions and gives control over all new oil fields to the regional governments, not the federal authority in Baghdad. Washington’s plan was to create Shiite and Kurdish regions that would provide a stable basis for American corporations to begin the wholesale exploitation of Iraq’s untapped oil reserves—the second largest in the world.

Thus far, this has not been possible. Sunni-based parties and organisations have bitterly opposed the constitution, as most of the country’s oil and gas fields are located in the south and north. A Sunni region in the centre would face the risk of being cut out of a share in the revenues. The predominantly Sunni Arab resistance groups regularly carry out successful attacks on oil refineries and pipelines across the country. The northern oil fields are barely able to operate. Iraqi oil production is declining, while the general insecurity has made companies reluctant to invest.

..cont'd

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/may2006/bide-m09.shtml

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