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Biden Favors Revised Iraq War Resolution,
Promotes Partition Plan
16.2.2007 |
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February 16, 2007
All of the other candidates in the crowded field for
the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination share
Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s strong
opposition to President Bush’s effort to increase
American troop strength in Iraq — even though Biden
has been able to play a particularly visible and
vocal role on the war as chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee.
Biden, however, does stand apart from his rival
White House contenders for the specificity of his
plan — and the widespread attention the
controversial proposal has received — to address the
sectarian violence among the nation’s Sunnis,
Shiites and Kurds that is rending Iraq and
contributing to mounting losses among U.S. military
personnel.
Biden — in a plan he drafted last year with Leslie
H. Gelb, a former president of the non-profit
organization Council on Foreign Relations — proposes
essentially partitioning Iraq into a loose
federation of autonomous Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni
regions. He is, thus far, the only presidential
hopeful in either major party to publicly endorse
this option.
Biden’s efforts to promote this proposal took him on
Thursday to the Brookings Institution, a policy
think tank in Washington, D.C. He described the plan
as “federalism,” and likened it to the 1995 accords
signed in Dayton, Ohio, that aimed to quell
sectarian carnage in Bosnia by dividing the Balkan
nation into separate ethnic federations of Bosnian
Muslims, Croats and Serbs. |
Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, is the ranking member of
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Leslie H. Gelb is the
president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Gov website
Photo: AFP |
“Ladies and gentlemen, it is my assertion that
federalism is Iraq’s best possible future,” Biden
said. “But unless we help make federalism work for
all Iraqis, the violence will not stop.”
Biden’s plan also would call for a “major diplomatic
offensive” to engage support of countries that share
the Middle Eastern region with Iraq — and also calls
for withdrawal of American troops by the end of
2008.
“The best way to focus Iraq’s leaders on the
political compromises they must make is to make it
clear to them that we are leaving,” Biden said.
Biden’s address came amid a vigorous debate in
Congress, controlled since January by Democrats,
over Bush’s plan to increase American troop
strength. The House is set to vote overwhelmingly
Friday for a non-binding resolution disapproving the
so-called “surge.” But the Senate rules that give
more power to the minority party than in the House
enabled Republican senators to stall Democratic
efforts to pass a mostly similar resolution. GOP
senators wanted the Senate to consider alternative
resolutions, but have been rebuffed by Majority
Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record) of
Nevada.
Senate Democratic leaders announced late Thursday
that the Senate, in an unusual Saturday session,
would consider a resolution identical to the one the
House is expected to pass on Friday. The Senate
tie-up has delayed the start of the chamber’s
scheduled week-long Presidents Day recess.
Biden, in his Brookings speech, called the troop
increase a “tragic mistake,” echoing the phrase he
has employed in his campaign speeches. But he said
opposing a troop increase is “only a first step” on
a course that required “radical change” in Iraq.
Biden said he is working on legislation to repeal
the 2002 resolution passed by Congress that
authorized President Bush to conduct military
operations in Iraq.
Biden voted for the resolution, as did Sens. Hillary
Rodham Clinton of New York and Christopher J. Dodd
of Connecticut and former Sen. John Edwards of North
Carolina, who also are running for president.
But Biden, who now calls that vote a mistake, says
Bush used his congressional authority unwisely.
Biden contends that the 2002 resolution needs to be
revised because Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi
dictator, has since been deposed and executed, and
because the weapons of mass destruction that the
Iraq regime supposedly had stockpiled — a principal
justification by the Bush administration for going
to war — were never found.
Biden’s proposal would replace the 2002 resolution
with a new document that Biden said would have a
“much narrower mission statement” for American
troops. Biden said this new resolution should
clearly state that U.S. troops should continue to
combat terrorists and train Iraqis, but also make
clear that U.S. troops will “responsibly draw down”
and not stay in Iraq indefinitely.
“Coupled with the Biden-Gelb plan, I believe this is
the most effective way to start bringing our troops
home without leaving a mess behind,” Biden said.
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