Thank goodness Reidar Visser has been paying some good close attention to what the senator and Veep candidate has been saying about Iraq since the Democratic convention, when suddenly all his Iraq-related writings suddenly disappeared from his website.
Since 2006,, Biden has been an ardent advocate of the radical decentralization of political power in Iraq. Most notably in his co-authorship along with Les Gelb for a plan that called for the “federalization” of the country. At the time of the Democratic convention, those were the writings that disappeared.
But now Visser reports that Biden’s “radio silence” on Iraq was only temporary, and that he has resumed his previous practice of talking about the country in a way that– like the US occupation authorities since 2003– stresses the sectarian or ethnic identities of Iraqis, de-emphasises their Iraqiness and the existence of many cross-cutting inter-ethnic and inter-sectarian alliances, and ignores almost.completely the many political schisms within each of the major demographic blocs.
Visser writes:
- Over the past few weeks… [t]he Delaware senator has repeatedly sought to convince journalists that the reason the “surge” is working is the absence of Shiites from Sunni-dominated Anbar: “there are no Sunnis in Anbar province–I mean, Shia in Anbar province…” This belief in sectarian identity as something that creates internal sub-group unity and enmity towards others is at its most glaring in Biden’s comments on the situation in Basra: “Do you think the people down in Basra are going to vote for a government in Basra any different than an all-Shia government in Basra?” asks Biden. In fact, the power struggle in Basra is currently between different Shiite groups that have radically different visions for what kind of status their area should have in Iraq. Some want a small federal region for Basra only, but most appear to prefer remaining under the central government. And those who back in 2005 and 2006 for a while advocated a third solution kindred to that proposed by Biden – a big Shiite region – have remained almost silent on the issue since late 2007…
All in all, on questions relating to state structure in Iraq, Biden has been mistaken on all counts: in terms of his interpretation of Iraqi politics (through continuing to deny the growing centralist trend and through continuing to focus on the exceptional 2006 situation); through his reading of the Iraqi constitution (by overlooking the asymmetrical and bottom-up character of Iraqi federalism); and through his failure to highlight the potentially grave regional consequences of his scheme (especially in terms of Iranian influence, which would probably be stronger in an ISCI-dominated federal entity than under any other arrangement). While the pro-Kurdish tendency inside the US Democratic Party is entirely understandable (and to some extent laudable) given all the suffering of the Kurds in the past, this should not be translated into an attempt to impose a Kurdish agenda on the rest of the country (as seemed evident for example in the recent US Democratic initiative to prevent oil deals with the central government). Most Iraqis are in fact perfectly prepared to accept the notion of complete Kurdish control in Kurdistan. It is the way Kurdish power is being used to push Iraq south of Kurdistan towards a decentralised system that many object to. On this issue, Biden is going against the prevailing wind in Iraq perhaps more than any other American politician.
… Iraqi politicians already speak about Biden as the father of a second “Balfour declaration” because of his “plans”, and the Democratic Party would lose its credibility in the entire Arab world if these schemes were allowed to snowball. Rather than conniving in soft partition agitation in the name of party unity, Democrats should now make a firm and public stand against an imposed federalisation of Iraq. A more sustainable Iraq position would be to start focusing on cross-sectarian politics and the unitary state as the best way forward – with federalism as an option for areas where there is a real popular demand for it (like Kurdistan and perhaps Basra), but not as an imposition on the entire country through US “help” and sponsorship. That would also be in the true spirit of the “carefulness in getting out of Iraq” so rightly advocated by Barack Obama.
The attention Visser has paid to Biden’s recent utterances is valuable. (It would be a lot more valuable, Reidar, if you could give us hyperlinks to the originals of these reports, or at the very least more precise citations. I would have liked to read them in the original, but couldn’t find them after a quick, fairly cursory search. But can’t you learn to embed a few source-links into your web-published writings for the rest of us?)
But we need to keep a couple of other points in mind:
- 1. Biden is only the vice presidential candidate. If Obama gets elected, he’ll be the boss, and he’ll have access to a lot of different sources for detailed advice on Iraq. The fact that Biden is a bit of an over-voluble blowhard doesn’t mean he will get to act as a Veep of Cheney-esque influence.
2. As I’ve noted here since early June, the logic of the power balance inside Iraq has already tipped against the US being able to say or do anything very much to affect the way the Iraqis choose to run their affairs, especially their domestic political affairs. Except at the margins. So Biden’s present bloviations may be unhelpful, particularly in terms of misleading US voters about what is going on inside Iraq. But I don’t think they’re going to make nearly as much difference on the ground in Iraq as the Senator himself presumably hopes they will.
Yeah, well, so much for Biden’s much ballyhooed foreign policy “expertise”. In fact, all he really knows about the Middle East is “Israel goooooooooood, Arabs baaaaaaaaaaaad!”
As I’ve noted here since early June, the logic of the power balance inside Iraq has already tipped against the US being able to say or do anything very much to affect the way the Iraqis choose to run their affairs, especially their domestic political affairs.
This is false statement, Helena why you hide under these words.
The reality Iran has the power inside Iraq they running the country according to their commitments to US.
There are no much conflicts here between US and Iran about Iraq.
American and Iranian proxy running Iraq, US power balance Iran influences inside Iraq…
When Helena and others telling us the real saga from inside Iraq?
Unless they don’t know or they hiding some thing not telling us the truth for some reason.
Ask any Iraq will tell you IRAN inside IRAQ. Go and ask most Iraqi in US near you Helena if you still don’t convinced (unless you likes Hezbollah followers….).
Helena, my apologies for the lack of hyperlinks. Unfortunately I rarely have time to insert them in my shorter posts like this one! And I’m travelling right now. But the Biden quotes should be googleable.
What Senator Biden is saying reflects the reality of the situation.
The US troops are being kept in Iraq until the Battle of Kirkuk (and probably Mosul) and the Kurdistan war are fought.
Curiously enough everywhere there is trouble there seem to be Israeli investors.
If Obama is elected with a strong Dem congress, surely he will withdraw all troops. Sooner rather than later?
That being the case, the Iraqi coalition govt will surely split apart. The Kurds will go their way leaving the Arab Iraqis, Shia and Sunni to work out their own arrangements. Since the Shia are about 80% of Arab Iraq and control the southern oilfields, the outome is predictable, if bloody and very nasty.
The Iranians, of course, will back their preferred Shia partners against the Sunnis, which makes the outcome even more assured.
Its the US, through W, that has always set the mission as the “unified Iraq”.
It’s been the Democrats, through Obama/Dem Congress, who want to get out and leave it to the demographics and the “real politics”
All Biden has been doing is put Dem policy into a logical framework. He knows enough about Iraq to see what the Democrat future will produce and has a plan he imagines will mitigate the blood-letting that will result absent a ruthless Saddam police state. Is too young to remember what followed after the partition of India.
So I can’t see electing Obama is going to address your problems with all this, Helena.
Faced with the distintegration of Iraq, where else will Obama go other than negotiated partition? Politically he will only have to be seen to saving the Kurds.
None of them, Dems or Repubs, give a stuff about unity of Iraq, democracy of Iraq or Arab Iraqis … as long as the Kurds are safe and the Arab Iraqis they don’t have WMDS to threaten the neighbours.
Simple as that.
If you want a unified Iraq, suggest you should be holding your nose and vote McCain in for the next 4 years.
“If Obama is elected with a strong Dem congress, surely he will withdraw all troops.”
Hahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaa! ROFLMSS! LOLOLOLOOOOOOLOLOL! Hoo boy! THAT was a good one! My abdomen hurts from laughing so hard.
Gee, who knew bb was also a comedian?!
Essential reading between now and the elections
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Savage-War-Peace-1954-1962-Classics/dp/1590172183/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221676795&sr=8-1
Charles de Gaulle is perhaps the most important statesman of the second half of the 20th century.
Read. Understand.
“What Senator Biden is saying reflects the reality of the situation.”
How so, Frank? It doesn’t bear very much resemblance at all to MY understanding of the reality of the situation. In fact, the Senator appears to be woefully ignorant of the reality of the Iraqi situation.
Of course, it does not seem to matter much to very many people that the Iraqis themselves are overwhelmingly opposed to any kind of partition, soft or hard.
Frank al Irlandi
“What Senator Biden is saying reflects the reality of the situation.”
Which reality you like to hear Frank al Irlandi?
I think Helena expressed well the reality when she said:
like the US occupation authorities since 2003– stresses the sectarian or ethnic identities of Iraqis, de-emphasises their Iraqiness and the existence of many cross-cutting inter-ethnic and inter-sectarian alliances, and ignores almost.
Let not forget Death Squads creations by US and UK who caught red handed near Basra dressed as locals with explosives and other bombing materials then they freed by UK tanks run over the police station that were detained that police station was left in ruins. Also some Mossad against running around just recently few killed in Kirkuk according to Israeli news paper report, they hold New Zealand Fake Passports and using them to do their work inside Iraq.
Then Militia Bader and Quads forces taken over to complete the job for the last three years what Helena sectarian or ethnic saga.
The reality I am referring to is the existence of Kurdistan as an autonomous area with a claim to a lot of oil wealth and ambitions to control Kirkuk and God Preserve us from all Harm– Mosul.
The reality I am referring to is the ethnic cleansing that has moved the Sunni population or a large part of it to refugee camps within Iraq and to Amman and Damascus.
The situation is starting to become similar to Belgium.
Kurdistan was proposed as a state by Treaty of Sevres and disapeared under Treaty of Lausanne.
An independent Kurdistan is an accident waiting to happen, very similar to Georgia.
If any of you know how to sort out this particlar mess without setting off fighting in East Anatolia up to the Armenian frontier and provoking Syrian and Iranian intervention to supress Israeli funded guerillas then let me know.
At least now I understand what the Iraqi government thinks it needs Abrams tanks and F-16s for.
Fellow Donkeys!
High-altitude and high-latitude Old Euros, Swiss and Lapps and blondly humourless disciples of Søren Kirkegaard, do not spontaneously much care for us jackasses with our “Democrat Party.” To demand elaborate documentation every time they bash us would be absurd, for it is mainly an incongruity of temperament that occasions intellectual border incidents like this one. We should respond with sorrow rather than irritation, bearing in mind that our triumph is inevitable. As Global Warming keeps up, they will soon not have a glacier in the back yard any more than we do, literally or spiritually, and then they are bound to degenerate in more or less our direction, the militant extremist Republican direction bein’ what it is — unthinkable.
Meanwhile, the current heresies of our Comrade Joseph Biden were sufficiently set forth on “Meet the Press,” Sunday, 7 September 2008 . “A day which will live in infamy!”
I heard Joe’s performance on the radio myself, as it happens, and admired it for reasons entirely unconnected with the question about which paleface planmonger’s plan is to be imposed upon the former ‘Iráq. Foreigners (including immigrants from Iceland and internal exiles) who are close enough to American politics to be dangerous will react along predictable lines, with the Elephant People and their fellow travelers findin’ the Senator intolerably bumptious and full of himself, whereas you and I naturally chuckle as we applaud. Poor Mr. Brokaw never did get a straight answer to what he and Miss Conventional Wisdom considered the crucial question, namely, “Why can’t you just admit that The SuRGe was a famous victory?” The ability to not-answer questions that it would be politically disadvantageous to be frank about is central to politics as we donkeys know it, and Joe’s not-answer was first class, I thought. A severe critic, though, might maintain that Mr. Brokaw was not an antagonist of sufficient stature: he simply kept on repeating the question even after it should have become apparent that he was never going to be given what he wanted.
Now as to the Herr Doktor Eselschläger, I find it irresistable to wonder if he would prefer that Joe had been seminar-room honest about The SuRGe — which then leads to the question of what Joe would have said, exactly, if he had adopted so foolish a course. There is no doubt that the Senator approves of far more aggression and invasionism and Preëmptive Retaliation (“Bush Doctrine”) than I do, so he certainly would not have responded “Look, Tom, the worst thing about The SuRGe is precisely that it worked. A potentially disastrous precedent is set whenever crime is seen to be successful.” That is also not the sort of reply ‘Tom’ was fishing for, though of course he would have been delighted with the news value of such a remark as coming from the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and vice-presidential nominee of the party of General Andy Jackson. I suppose Joe privately thinks that The SuRGe was technically successful but has not changed the fundamentals of the bushogenic quagmire — something like that.
In context, it is unimportant what Joe would have said if he were frank. It is also comparatively unimportant exactly what he did say while being unfrank. The great thing is his successful not-answering of the question, never getting within ten miles of the fished-for response, say, “Well, Tom, everybody knows The SuRGe has been a very famous victory indeed and that it constitutes one excellent reason why everybody ought to vote for J. Sidney McCain come November. We Democrats could never have pulled it off.” Even ‘Tom’ couldn’t expect to hit that bull’s eye, of course, but it would have sufficed if Sen. Biden had been detectably distressed and jealous about the (conventionally supposed) accomplishments of Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton and Crawford and West Point.
He was nothing of the sort. He was . . . — well, I have already mentioned “intolerably bumptious and full of himself.” Joe had the audacity to pretend that everything Mr. T. Brokaw and Miss C. Wisdom take to be a favourable development in the former ‘Iráq is to be credited to us jackasses. All military successes have resulted from Bush and Bush’s ‘David’ bein’ compelled to adopt the Obama Plan despite themselves. And all political successes have resulted from … ta-DA! … the Biden Plan, equally resorted to by the militant extremist GOP only after all their own dumb in-house ideas had failed. (“Didn’t you know that? … Me neither!”)
It hardly requires the talents and erudition and funereal solemnity of a Dr. Eselschläger to notice a certain discrepancy with the real world here. That discrepancy is why the show was so much fun. Obviously. It is as if Mr. Gore of Tennessee had modestly admitted that yes, as a matter of fact, he more or less did invent the Internet. Shucks! (The real Mr. Gore rather alarmingly resembled a high-latitude Old Euro. Despite his views, does he not manage to give a general impression of having somehow wandered into the wrong party? And Senatorino B. Hussein Obáma of Chicagoland shows occasional symptoms too. “All little less Adlai Stevenson, if you could, please, gentlemen! Reread your H. L. Mencken, the passages about how it is SUPPOSED to be a clown show!”)
Dr. Eselschläger’s own designs of imposition being limited to the Middle East, it is of little importance whether or not he understands what Joe and Tom were really up to. However he alarms himself needlessly about the Biden Plan. It cannot possibly be any worse than the status quo, because, according to the schizomaniac himself, the Biden Plan has already been implemented and therefore simply IS the present state of the former ‘Iráq. Dr. E. is behaving like a fish that is afraid of getting wet.
I daresay Sen. Biden is less dissatisfied with that present state than Dr. E. is, but then so are dozens and hundreds of Yank jackasses at the various Tanks of Thought. Should Commanderissimo McCain get shot down on his sortie to the Oval Office, it is not any sort of Biden Plan — past, present or jocular — that will be imposed on the hapless post-Iraqis, but something like a Kahl-Gause-Lynch-Parker Plan. A Centre for a New American Security kind of plan.
Vote early and often! Happy days!!
((Nonpartisan addendumb))
The CNAS planmongers have received favourable reviews from Dr. Eselschläger, though not by name: “Democratic Iraq policy is at its best when it emphasises conditionality, or when it dares to be critical about the Maliki administration and the system it upholds.” ‘Conditionality’ is a God word as well as a code word at CNAS.
Alas, conditionality by itself can never furnish the key to all neocolonial mythologies. It is the name of a particular method or procedure of imposition, one which even the abominable Biden might in principle adopt to chop and slice and shred and dice the former ‘Iráq to suit his own corrupted palate.
The specifically eselschlägerisch matter or substance to be imposed, whether conditionally or prëemptively or however, has become rather difficult to grasp of late. Its new God word, or rather Devil word, appears to be ‘artificial’, as in
Help the Iraqis reverse imbalances and biases in Iraqi politics and ARTIFICIAL institutions of government and political arrangements that were introduced with the help of formidable military power during the Bush era between 2003 and 2008.
The school of thought or sentimentality behind that sentence is as old as the hills, or anyway, as old as the Stoics, but some of us are mystified by it still. How on Gore’s green earth could any political arrangement whatever be ‘natural’? What does it mean? “How could they tell?” For that matter, what prevents the fiend Biden from claiming that all ex-‘Iráq is naturaliter divisa in partes tres?
Anyhow, it is plain that Dr. Eselschläger advocates Responsible Nonwithdrawal™, having not the slightest intention of abandoning post-Iraqis to Nature and themselves any time soon, not with all those unreversed imbalances and biases scattered across the political landscape.
((L’Envoi))
No doubt the ‘conditionality’ of CNAS and the Nature or nonartificiality of Eselschläger are different from the “trainin’ wheels” that George XLIII Bush once mentioned. Not different enough for me, though.