Biden Channels Mencken
Hmmm, news flash. Sen. Joe Biden apparently believes in reincarnation, which would make him the Shirley MacLaine of the Senate. It seems that in a previous life he must have been H.L. Mencken, the sage from Baltimore. How else to explain his recent policy prescription for Iraq, to partition it? It is proof of what Mencken famously said, “For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.”
I guess that if we needed any further proof that Biden is planning to run for president in 2008 this is it. All candidates must, by definition, be able to claim credit for at least one really boneheaded proposal, and this certainly qualifies.
Of course, Biden didn’t dream this up all by himself. He is merely providing a vehicle for Leslie Gelb, formerly an assistant secretary in Jimmy Carter’s State Department and currently president emeritus of the Council for Foreign Relations, who has been peddling this idea for years. He first proposed this idea, less than seven months after President Bush proclaimed “mission accomplished.” Gelb was advocating partition even before all the present troubles emerged and before there had been a single Iraqi election.
(Note to Council: you might want to rethink that whole “nonpartisan center for scholars dedicated to producing and disseminating ideas so that individual and corporate members, as well as policymakers, journalists, students, and interested citizens in the United States and other countries, can better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other governments.”).
Biden spelled out his ideas in article with Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, in a New York Times op-ed “Unity Through Autonomy in Iraq” May 1 and in a speech before the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia. Although Biden says his plan is not a call for partition it is hard to see what else it could be.
Though, in fairness, Gelb and Biden, aren’t the only ones who support partition. There are others who think it inevitable. See, for example, this article by Gareth Stanfield of the University of Exeter in the British Prospect magazine.
What’s wrong with it? Let me count the ways. Here is what some of the regional and country experts say.
Gelb and Biden do identifies real problems: the danger of ethnic cleansing and potential genocide if the ongoing violence in Iraq run out of control; the problem of disputed cities, e.g. Kirkuk and Baghdad itself; the uneven distribution of oil resources; the difficulty of protecting rights of women and minorities; the dangerous role of militias that represent various ethnic or sectarian groups; and the danger that a civil war would draw Iraq’s neighbors into a regional war in defense of particular groups or strategic territory.
But when you ask how a weak central government, key to the Gelb-Biden plan, could prevent this from happening you are only told that present policies are already failing. The implication is that there is nothing to lose by trying something different. Left unanswered is how their plan actually improves things
For example, if you accept that the militias will remain and will provide “security,” and that there will be no serious national army or security service, then who is going to enforce all these changes?
Their proposal proposes to “bribe” the Sunnis with promises of a substantial percentage of the oil revenues. But why would a feeble government in Baghdad, presumably still dominated numerically by Shii and Kurds enforce this?
Their plan proposes that U.S. aid be increased on the understanding that it will be withdrawn unless the rights of women and minorities are respected. At the moment, we are spending some $10 billion per month with very limited effect. That is the equivalent, in current dollars, of a Marshall Plan every thirteen months. Are we going to keep that up — even increase it — after this project goes into effect just to protect women and minority rights? And will the Shia authorities in the south revise their traditional behavior accordingly?
Finally, this proposal presents itself as merely making a virtue of necessity. If things are inevitably headed toward civil war and separation, then let’s adopt that as our policy and come out on the right side of history. But, while superficially appealing the United States is not going to be able to simply shuck off its responsibility and withdraw with honor intact. On the contrary, we would be taking on the additional responsibility of overseeing the emergence of three separate political entities, each with its own interests, vulnerabilities and ambitions. It is we who would accept responsibility for equitable distribution of oil revenues, for preventing ethnic cleansing in the highly mixed Iraqi population, for maintaining minority rights.
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