Senator Joseph Biden has given us some insight into the type of President he would be, should he be elected. He would impose his will for the good of all. Recently he
suggested the creation of separate, autonomous regions for Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds to counter continuing ethnic and religious violence....
Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, presented his plan as an alternative to the options of a rapid withdrawal or a continuing war.
The "third way" Biden proposed would give each of the major ethnic and religious groups in Iraq broad authority to run local affairs.
The central government in Baghdad would be given limited, but specific, responsibilities for border defense, foreign policy, oil production and revenues.
The thing is, there is no indication that this is what the Iraqi people want. I mean they have voted a number of times, one of which approved a Constitution which would deal with such issues. Also, the Iraqi Government just went through an extended period of time forming their government by using political negotiation and compromise in order to come out the other end with a unified government, not a fractured one. Senator Biden would have them throw away all of that valuable work, with all of the valuable lessons learned because he fears the people within the borders of Iraq can not get along?
There are racial issues right here in America. Black, Asians, Latinos sometimes don't get along. There are gang wars along racial lines that leave people dead. To solve this would President Biden decide that we should all be segregated to our own little parts of the country?
And why is it that Senator Biden is apparently all for a radical implementation of Federalism in Iraq, while he is against Federalism at all within the US?
Perhaps I'm being thick, but I just don't get what Sen Biden is trying to do here. I mean we are told all the time that America is trying to impose its will upon everyone in the world even when what we do is support and defend their ability to make their own decisions. Yet here is a Senator, who hope to be President, attempting to impose his idea upon the Iraqi people regardless of what they think.
Senator Biden, by all accounts, is a "very serious" man who is a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. Well to my mind, if this is the work product of the most serious of the Democrats Foreign Relations experts, I have to say that the Democrats a bereft of serious thinkers when it comes to International Relations.
Regional governments — run by Kurds in the north; Sunni Muslims in the central region, excluding Baghdad; and Shiite Muslims in the south — "would be responsible for administering their own regions," the senator said. Baghdad, according to Biden's strategy, would be a federal zone.
So let me get this right: Three zones each with a different ethnic makeup, separated and with their own armies. If that doesn't sound like a recipe for Civil War, I don't know what does.
And what's worse, there would be very little to distinguish this from creating three separate countries within Iraq: Something the Turks would surely have a problem with because the Norther "zone" would look a helluvalot like a Kurdistan.
Mr Senator Serious Foreign Relations thinker missed that one, huh?
