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http://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/columnists/harry-themal/2014/06/22/joe-biden-something/11137125/

Joe Biden was on to something

Joe Biden was right.

It becomes clearer that the federated government idea that the then Delaware senator advanced for Iraq more than eight years ago might well have averted the country’s collapse into civil war.

Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged Iraq to establish decentralized power-sharing. On Oct. 3, 2007, the Senate voted 75 to 23 to recommend Iraq set up a federal system of regional governments of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

All 23 opponents were Republicans but many supported the Biden plan. Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, who would later become secretaries of state, voted with an all-but-unanimous Democrat Senate.

The only Democratic senator not voting was Barack Obama. His eventual presidential campaign opponent, Republican John McCain, was also not voting. Perhaps they were already out campaigning.

Biden formulated his plan with Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. Shia-Sunni terroristic bombings proved a civil war had already occurred. And as Nuri al-Maliki formed a Shiite government, excluding Sunnis, the situation only became worse as seen by continuous suicide attacks by Sunnis.

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates strongly put down Biden in his recent memoir, “I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

The current situation in Iraq proves how wrong Gates is and how right Biden was as the then presidential candidate urged the Bush administration to make federalism work. As he and Gelb said in a Washington Post essay, “It is hard to imagine more ‘suffering and bloodshed’ ” – the words with which the U.S. Embassy blasted the federalism plan – “than what we’ve already seen from government-tolerated militia, jihadists, Baathists and administration ineptitude.” And they were writing about 2006 and 2007, not today.

Federalism, Biden and Gelb wrote, would assure “the fair distribution of oil revenue, the safe return of refugees, integrating militia members into local security forces, leveraging the shared interests of other countries in a stable Iraq ... [It] is the one formula that fits the seemingly contradictory desires of most Iraqis to remain whole and of various groups to govern themselves for the time being.”

Despite the Senate vote, the Obama-Biden administration, when it came into office in January 2009, did not push the idea. Biden was now probably silent because his boss, the president, did not approve. Biden continued to be the link between the White House and the Malaki administration, but it’s obvious he and the United States had no influence over a Shiite dictator who made no efforts to reach out to the Sunnis who formerly controlled Iraq.

Last week Biden spoke not only to Malaki but to the Sunnite speaker of the Council of Representatives and the president of the Kurdish region, According to the White House, he told Malaki again he needs to “govern in an inclusive manner, promote stability and unity among Iraq’s population, and address the legitimate needs of Iraq’s diverse communities.”

It was similar to the message Obama pronounced again Thursday in his press conference.

The Biden-Gelb plan has now won new support. Blogger Chris Weigant on the Huffington Post, in a lengthy analysis of the Iraq debacle, starts off by saying “Biden was right in the scheme to create three largely autonomous states, a ‘Kurdistan’ in the north, and a region for the Sunnis and Shiites.”

We must not forget that Iraq was an artificially created state after World War I.

And that while most of the world’s Muslims are Sunni, the Shiite dissenters who formed after the death of Muhammad in 632 are continuing to divide the religion.

We can’t be sure Biden was right but his plan is certainly better than anything we have seen.

Harry Themal has written a News Journal column since 1989.


Eric D. Schwerin
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com

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