Here we go again, its campaign season and the candidates are once again stirring controversy in regards to the Iraq policy. Democrats want to withdraw as quickly as possible while Republicans want to stay the course. I happen to watch an episode of “Meet the Press”, where guest Senator Joe Bide, vice presidential nominee suggested his plan for segregation of Iraq along ethnic and sectarian lines. When Mr. Biden first announced his partition plan, Iraqi leaders and U.S. officials understood it to mean the establishment of strong Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish regional administrations.
It seems that all those years in the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee have been thrown out the window by proposing a plan that would only increase tension between ethnic lines. Many independent commentators have traveled to Iraq and agree that the “surge” has been effective in reducing the violence dramatically in the garrison region of Anbar Province. Attacks by Al-Qaeda have significantly decreased partly in part of the “surge.” Mr. Biden seems to have accepted that there is no clear victory in Iraq. Of course not, the real victory will be when the Iraqi people begin to unify across ethnic lines and establish themselves as formal sovereign nation. It seems illusive for now but ultimately time will tell.
The response on behalf of Iraqi officials has been troubling because of the progress that has been made so far will ultimately backfire by defining lines that separate ethnic groups. According to one official,
“Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala’i, the representative of Iraq’s most senior Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, called the Senate resolution “a step toward the breakup of Iraq. It is a mistake to imagine that such a plan will lead to a reduction in chaos in Iraq; rather, on the contrary, it will lead to an increase in the butchery and a deepening of the crisis of this country, and the spreading of increased chaos, even to neighboring states.”
(Council on Foreign Relations)
Mr. Biden needs to be really careful when he is proposing U.S. policy that can ultimately backfire on him even before its implemented. The same goes to Mr. Obaba and Mr. McCain who are at a very critical point to obtain the presidency. Furthermore, U.S. policy towards Iraq will probably continue to be the same regardless of who becomes president because this will ultimately be decided on what the conditions on the ground look like. The Iraqis do have a say in their country and the U.S. should be there to advise not implement policy that will eventually lead to another domestic crisis that has lead to thousands of U.S. military casualties as well as the numerous amount of Iraqi civilians killed over the course of the conflict.
Of course, Biden did not just make this stuff up. Prior to the war, some planners within the Bush administration imagined that the country would divide into three.