Divide Iraq? Joe Biden should keep his mouth shut

Iraq’s partition might be inevitable. It might not. But Iraq has the beginnings of a democratic government that is trying to overcome ethnic and religious divisions.

So Let Iraq decide. For U.S. Sen. Joe Biden to suggest a formal division of Shiites and Sunnis at this late moment is arrogant and potentially dangerous. He writes today in The New York Times that his idea:

"is to maintain a united Iraq by decentralizing it, giving each ethno-religious group ... room to run its own affairs, while leaving the central government in charge of common interests."

Ethnic cleansing? This sounds like an unhealthy mixture of America’s failed Articles of Confederation and Serbia’s ethnic cleansing. Instead of bolstering the idea of learning to tolerate differences, Biden surrenders to bigotry. Instead of one from many, he promotes the many hiding from one another.

Kurdistan already is off as a region of its own, and that fact is recognized in Iraq’s consitution. But what Biden really is saying is that the Shiite Arabs and Sunni Arabs can never get along. Well, maybe it’s time they used freedom to make peace.

Biden and his co-writer Leslie H. Gelb suggest that, as Sunni Arab Iraq breaks off as a sort of Fallujahstan, the Shiites should guarantee forever that the Sunni Arabs (about a fifth of Iraq’s population) receive 20 percent of the revenue Iraq gets from its oil.

Poison pill. Biden and Gelb are only half right here. The Sunni Arab areas should get about 20 percent of oil revenue, but that proposal should not be tied in any way to dividing non-Kurdish Iraq. If the Shiite majority views the oil-poor Sunni Arabs as splintering off on their own, they’ll say fine, goodbye and go find something of your own to sell.

Negotiating the division of Iraq’s oil revenue must assume that Arab Iraq stays firmly together, or that bargain will never be struck.

If we want Iraq to be a democratic example of liberal open-mindedness, if we are true to our own American principles, we should do more to encourage Iraqi unity. The least we can do, as non-Iraqis, is to keep quiet and let the Iraqis choose.

On the other foot. Joe Biden comes off here as the Ugly American. What if the Iraqi parliament urged the United States to split into racial and religious regions? How well would he receive that idea?

What if some Iraqi official proposed that 20 percent of the American population get 20 percent of the U.S. senators? What if he proposed that states with only .3 percent of the population get no senators at all?

Frank Warner

Comments

[Christopher Taylor]

It's just nice to see a Democrat attempt to have some kind of plan for the future. Not a good plan, mind you, but it's an attempt at SOME plan.

[Neo]

This is the best testament to why Delaware should be rejoined with Pennsylvania.

[jj mollo]

That's an interesting thought, Neo. Do small states generate lesser quality senators and governors? They should. Assuming there is a certain natural level of legislative talent per capita, we would expect Del and RI to elect lesser lights. Western states will tell you that it's talent per acre that matters. Where's that list of top ten senators? Can we predict that they come from the biggest/most populous states? It's pretty hard to be objective about the evauation, though.

[Frank Warner]

The sad thing about Joe Biden is that he knows better. Sometimes he's silly and sometimes he plays the goofy tough guy, but he generally knows what's going on. He knows the Iraq battle is going about as good as could be expected and, in fact, it probably will start making major gains this year.

But he's also transparently political. He can pander with the best of them. Now he's the latest Democrat to propose an Iraq exit date exactly when he believes Bush would withdraw U.S. troops anyway. The idea again is that, when Bush pulls out most of the troops, some Democrat eventually will be able to say, "See, I proposed that date. Without my proposal, Bush never would have thought of it."

But Biden's proposal to break Iraq into three provinces is really weird, coming now from an American senator. Who does Biden think he is? Who does Biden think America is? We can't just split Iraq into three pieces. It's no longer our call. That's up to Iraq.

Biden is grandstanding, and it doesn't look too grand.