2004___
"Much has been said about the potential consequences of failure in Iraq--how it would provide a new haven for terrorists, deal a blow to reformers and modernizers throughout the region, and encourage radicals in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. But perhaps failure's most pernicious legacy will be a further hardening of the Democratic Party's Vietnam syndrome--its distrust of government and the use of American power.
That syndrome is one reason why, from day one, many of us in Congress pressed the president to level with the American people about what would be required to prevail in Iraq. But he didn't. He didn't tell them that well over 100,000 troops would be needed for well over two years. He didn't tell them the cost would surpass $200 billion--and far exceed Iraq's oil revenue. He didn't tell them that our children and grandchildren would pay the bill because of his refusal to rescind even a small portion of the tax cut he gave to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. He didn't tell them that, even after paying such a heavy price, success was not assured, because no one had ever succeeded at forcibly democratizing a nation in the Middle East, let alone an entire region.
As a result, today those who recognize that we must persevere in Iraq risk losing public support. Americans sense that our policy is adrift and that we do not have a plan for success. Worse, they may conclude that this is what happens when we venture abroad. Someday, probably sooner rather than later, there will be another Slobodan Milosevic or another Saddam, and the profound mistakes in Iraq will make it harder to generate domestic and international political support for the use of force. That is a legacy we can ill afford.
Maybe, as some argue, so many mistakes have been made in Iraq that it is impossible to turn the corner. Anti-American attitudes and a nascent warlordism may already be so deeply entrenched that there is little we can do to succeed. It would be foolhardy to deny that possibility. But it would be even more foolhardy, and dangerous, to accept failure as inevitable and move to cut our losses. Despite the naysayers, it is not too late. But only the president can alter our course in Iraq. As he did when Congress first authorized him to use force, the president has the choice of using his power effectively or squandering it to satisfy ideological predilections. Let us hope he has grown wiser in the past year."
more:
http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdf?vid=1&hid=7&sid=0106c07d-cd20-4a3a-855d-bf41fb7ffae7%40sessionmgr92004___
"There are three things the President should do immediately:
First, he needs to send in more American troops now to gain control of the security situation... and to give other countries confidence that they will not be walking into a quagmire.
Second, he should seek agreement right away from the major powers with the most at stake in Iraq to form an international board of directors responsible for overseeing the difficult political transition in Iraq. It could be the U.N. Security Council. It could be an ad hoc group, like the kind we formed to deal with Bosnia or the Middle East Peace Process. It's members would include our European allies, Russia and our friends in the Middle East.
A senior representative of that Board would replace Ambassador Bremer and the CPA as Iraq's primary international partner, and speak with the authority of the international community, not just the United States. He would have the authority to seek consensus on a caretaker government... to help Iraqis decide what that government will look like and who will run it... to mediate the disputes that are sure to arise between June 30 and elections next January... and to oversee the elections themselves. Lakhdar Brahimi has begun to play that role informally. Let's make it formal, with a clear, authoritative mandate from the major powers. That would maximize his leverage... and our prospects for success.
Third, the President should ask the U.N. to bless this arrangement with a new Security Council Resolution. Look, I don't have any illusions about the U.N. I don't attribute to it any magic powers... or any special competence or capability. But it's central involvement would, to quote George Will, "usefully blur the clarity of U.S. primacy." Foreign leaders need political cover to convince their people who opposed the war to help build the peace. The Iraqi people are more likely to accept the words of a partner who represents the will of the world than to heed the decree of an American ambassador hunkered down in a new "super embassy."
If the President does these three things, I believe several major benefits would follow. Other countries would be much more likely to take part in rebuilding Iraq. During the 1990s... in the Balkans... in Haiti... in East Timor... the U.S. typically provided about 20 percent of the post-conflict reconstruction resources. By that ratio, the $20 billion Congress has already appropriated for Iraq should have generated $80 billion from the rest of the world. Instead, we've raised less than $15 billion.
An international stamp of approval would also open the door to NATO . . ."
more:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2004/04/iraq-040415-biden01.htm2006___
"As long as American troops are in Iraq in significant numbers, the insurgents can't win and we can't lose. But intercommunal violence has surpassed the insurgency as the main security threat. Militias rule swathes of Iraq and death squads kill dozens daily. Sectarian cleansing has recently forced tens of thousands from their homes. On top of this, President Bush did not request additional reconstruction assistance and is slashing funds for groups promoting democracy.
Iraq's new government of national unity will not stop the deterioration. Iraqis have had three such governments in the last three years, each with Sunnis in key posts, without noticeable effect. The alternative path out of this terrible trap has five elements.
The first is to establish three largely autonomous regions with a viable central government in Baghdad. The Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite regions would each be responsible for their own domestic laws, administration and internal security. The central government would control border defense, foreign affairs and oil revenues. Baghdad would become a federal zone, while densely populated areas of mixed populations would receive both multisectarian and international police protection.
The second element would be to entice the Sunnis into joining the federal system with an offer they couldn't refuse. To begin with, running their own region should be far preferable to the alternatives: being dominated by Kurds and Shiites in a central government or being the main victims of a civil war. But they also have to be given money to make their oil-poor region viable. The Constitution must be amended to guarantee Sunni areas 20 percent (approximately their proportion of the population) of all revenues.
The third component would be to ensure the protection of the rights of women and ethno-religious minorities by increasing American aid to Iraq but tying it to respect for those rights. Such protections will be difficult, especially in the Shiite-controlled south, but Washington has to be clear that widespread violations will stop the cash flow.
Fourth, the president must direct the military to design a plan for withdrawing and redeploying our troops from Iraq by 2008 (while providing for a small but effective residual force to combat terrorists and keep the neighbors honest). We must avoid a precipitous withdrawal that would lead to a national meltdown , but we also can't have a substantial long-term American military presence. That would do terrible damage to our armed forces, break American and Iraqi public support for the mission and leave Iraqis without any incentive to shape up.
Fifth, under an international or United Nations umbrella, we should convene a regional conference to pledge respect for Iraq's borders and its federal system. For all that Iraq's neighbors might gain by picking at its pieces, each faces the greater danger of a regional war. A "contact group" of major powers would be set up to lean on neighbors to comply with the deal . . ."
more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/01/opinion/01biden.html2007___
"Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said yesterday that he believes top officials in the Bush administration have privately concluded they have lost Iraq and are simply trying to postpone disaster so the next president will "be the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof," in a chaotic withdrawal reminiscent of Vietnam.
"I have reached the tentative conclusion that a significant portion of this administration, maybe even including the vice president, believes Iraq is lost," Biden said. "They have no answer to deal with how badly they have screwed it up. I am not being facetious now. Therefore, the best thing to do is keep it from totally collapsing on your watch and hand it off to the next guy -- literally, not figuratively."
Biden expressed opposition to the president's plan for a "surge" of additional U.S. troops and said he has grave doubts about whether the Iraqi government has the will or the capacity to help implement a new approach. He said he hopes to use the hearings to "illuminate the alternatives available to this president" and to provide a platform for influencing Americans, especially Republican lawmakers.
"There is nothing a United States Senate can do to stop a president from conducting his war," Biden said. "The only thing that is going to change the president's mind, if he continues on a course that is counterproductive, is having his party walk away from his position."
Biden said that Vice President Cheney and former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld "are really smart guys who made a very, very, very, very bad bet, and it blew up in their faces. Now, what do they do with it? I think they have concluded they can't fix it, so how do you keep it stitched together without it completely unraveling?"
more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/04/AR2007010401525.html2007___
"The Bush administration is heading in exactly the wrong direction.
Instead of a diplomatic and political offensive to forge a political settlement, it proposes a military offensive that would send 17,500 Americans into the middle of a sectarian conflict in a city of 6.2 million people.
This military surge in Iraq is not a solution - it is a tragic mistake.
If we should be surging forces anywhere, it is in Afghanistan.
I'm glad the President has recognized what many of us have been saying for years: unless we surge troops, hardware, money, and high-level attention into Afghanistan, it will fall back into the hands of the Taliban, terrorists and drug traffickers. I support the steps he announced today but I hope they are the first steps - not the last - in a recommitment to Afghanistan."
more:
http://biden.senate.gov/press/speeches/speech/?id=2c5e3686-0d4f-4b07-ba50-bf02f60bf01d2007___
"When you listen to a lot of Democrats, they say, "Let's leave and hope for the best, because maybe that will get the Iraqis to come to their senses." And you hear the president say, "Just do more of the same and hand it off to the next guy." None of them offer a political solution.
What is the political solution? As General Hayden said -- and I want to quote him, the head of the CIA -- he said, "The inability of the central government to govern is irreversible." I've been saying that for three years. The fatal fundamental strategic flaw everybody is making is to think that there's any combination of actions we could take to generate a strong central government, representing all of the factions in Baghdad that was trusted by the Iraqi people. It will not happen in your lifetime or mine.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, then, how do you create this three-part government, divided into three provinces, Shia, Sunni and Kurds? How does that get created? Is it done by the Iraqis themselves? Does it have to be imposed from the outside?
SEN. JOE BIDEN: Well, first of all, it's what the Iraqi constitution calls for. The Iraqi constitution in Article One says, "We are a decentralized, federal system." Then in Articles 15, 16 and 17, if I'm not mistaken, it says, "Any one of the 18 governates," the 18 political subdivisions of Iraq, "can join with any other or on their own and become a region." The comparable example would be like a state in the United States of America.
If you become a region, you write your own constitution that can't supersede the federal constitution, but gives you control over your security and all of the apparatus like you do in a state, like the state of Delaware, the state of New York. And so the constitution already says it, number one.
Number two, because we have no credibility any longer in the region, I believe this can only occur -- and I suggested this to Secretary Rice today in my meeting -- if, in fact, you've got the permanent five of the Security Council to call for a regional conference on Iraq, including bringing in all of its neighbors, like we did in Dayton to settle the situation in Bosnia, and agreed on the constitutional construct that the Iraqis have, and have the imperator of the international community.
That's the only way it will be brought about. Absent that, Judy, absent a political settlement, it's either all or nothing. You either get completely out, which is the only option I would choose, or you put a considerably greater number of American forces in there, which is not within our capacity to do so."
more:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec07/iraq_07-18.html2008___
LAUER: You didn't wait to hear from General Petraeus last week. You said the surge is a failure. Yesterday you heard him say the progress is real but it's fragile and reversible. Did he say anything yesterday that changed your mind?
BIDEN: No. Look, what I said was that the military side of the surge works. It's brought down violence. But we went from drowning to treading water. And now we're having 30 to 40 Americans die a month, 225 a month wounded. and we're spending $3 billion a month with no end in sight, Matt. They have no plan how to get down below 140,000. They have no plan how to end this war and they have no political prescription as to how to bring the parties together.
LAUER: In terms of the security improvements that have been made -- General Petraeus laid those out -- with the challenges with the Iraqi government, when he uses those words, "fragile and reversible," Senator, are you okay with the fact that withdrawing troops might take us backwards in Iraq?
BIDEN: No. Look, Matt, we can debate whether or not the cost of drawing down troops will hurt. That's debatable. For example, as many military experts argued if we were to withdraw gradually and more substantially from Iraq, that al Qaeda would be hurt more than if we stayed. I asked yesterday -- I asked our ambassador and I asked Petraeus, where is the greatest threat from al Qaeda, in Afghanistan where we don't have enough troops to fight them, by their own admission, or in Iraq? They said they're more dangerous in Afghanistan. We don't debate the cost of staying, Matt. The costs of staying are immense, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has said...it's killing us.
more:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/09/joe-biden-on-iraq-staying_n_95818.html2008___
"Recent events have demonstrated clearly that Barack Obama's judgment on Iraq is right. Now, it's time to heed that judgment so that we can successfully end the war while refocusing on the fight in Afghanistan.
Sen. Obama has said repeatedly that there have been significant gains in lowering the levels of violence in Iraq. These gains have come from the heroic sacrifices of our men and women in uniform, as well as the success of the Sunni tribes in fighting al-Qaeda, and the cease-fire that has been respected by Shiite militias.
But the stated purpose of the surge was to help bring about the political progress and economic development necessary for long-term stability in Iraq. That progress still lags.
That is why we must welcome the growing consensus in both the USA and Iraq for a timeline that will allow the responsible redeployment of our combat brigades out of Iraq. I agree with Sen. Obama and the prime minister of Iraq that we can safely redeploy all our combat brigades out of Iraq in 2010, with a residual force to fight terrorists, train Iraqis and protect our personnel.
This redeployment is absolutely necessary if we hope to restore our military strength and finish the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan's tribal areas. This is the central front in the war on terror. This is where the 9/11 attacks were planned and where terrorists could be plotting against America today.
With the Taliban and al-Qaeda on the rise and violence more severe than at any time since the beginning of the war, we must free up more resources in order to succeed. As Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledges, we can do so only if we redeploy our forces from Iraq.
Success in Iraq must not be defined by staying in Iraq indefinitely; success is leaving Iraq to an Iraqi government that is reconciling its differences and taking responsibility for its future.
It's time to encourage the Iraqi government to stand up on its own while we refocus on the war in Afghanistan and the broad range of national security challenges we face. Barack Obama is profoundly right that the next president must be more than commander in chief for Iraq — he must meet challenges to America's security around the world."
article:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/07/opposing-view-3.html
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