President Biden 46

related page: Biden Cheney plan to break up Iraq - ethnic conflict to control oil: the Empire's New Middle East map

I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.
-- John Adams, 1780, to Abigail

 

It seems obvious that Biden will replace Trump. Much of the establishment support for Trump is in free fall due to the incompetent mismanagement of the pandemic, the economic fallout and Trump's blatant insanity. In contrast, there are virtually no citizens who have gone from anti-Trump to pro-Trump. Faith based voting machines and voter suppression by Republicans may not be enough to give Trump a second (stolen) term.

But if you vote for Biden, don't pretend he is something other than he is. I'm not trying to persuade anyone to vote for Biden nor anyone else. Most voters have probably made their minds up about Trump. Further spread of coronavirus impacting conservative communities is likely to seal Trump's electoral fate more than television ads, position papers, celebrity endorsements or phone calls from campaign volunteers to voters they don't know.

In 2008, I voted for Cynthia McKinney, a Democratic African-American Congressperson from Atlanta who was kicked out of her party for calling for impeachment of Bush and Cheney, among other unforgiveables. She ran as a Green.

In 2012 and 2016, I voted None of the Above, an honorable choice. Of course, here in Oregon, the ballot scanners were going to say "Democrat" no matter what. Oregon's electors were accurately allocated to the D's. Can't say the same about electors in 2016 in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Florida -- but all 100 Senators, including Biden and Sanders, supported the fraudulent results in those states when they ratified the electoral college's alleged outcome in January 2017.

The only purpose for the Green Party campaign in 2016 was to give them standing to challenge the electoral thefts in swing states Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, while nine million dollars were raised for that (far more than the Greens raised during the campaign), the obstinance of the Republican officials in those states prevented any accurate counting (not a "recount" - the ballots were never counted in toto on Election Day). The Democratic Party is deathly afraid of pointing out Republican rigging, partly because they have done some similar tactics but more due to the ridicule they fear receiving if they point out fraud.

My view is the illusion of democracy was shattered in Dallas on November 22, 1963, when the generals and spies extrajudicially removed the 35th President after he announced the end of the Cold War, nuclear arms race, normalization with Cuba, withdrawal from Vietnam. It will take more than replacing Trump with somebody saner to shift away from war, domination, omnicide.

www.jfkmlkrfk.com
Truth and Reconciliation for the National Insecurity State

 

Biden's energy / climate plan: greenwashing and nuclear

https://joebiden.com/clean-energy/

"Drive dramatic cost reductions in critical clean energy technologies, including battery storage, negative emissions technologies, the next generation of building materials, renewable hydrogen, and advanced nuclear"

"continuing to leverage the carbon-pollution free energy provided by existing sources like nuclear and hydropower"

"Create a new Advanced Research Projects Agency on Climate .... advanced nuclear reactors, that are smaller, safer, and more efficient at half the construction cost of today's reactors"

 

This section also suggests "decarbonizing industrial heat needed to make steel, concrete and chemicals." I recommend Richard Heinberg and David Fridley's book "Our Renewable Future" which detailed why this goal (industrial heating) is going to be extremely difficult at best. Delocalization, power down, de-growth / steady state economics, permaculture, transition towns make more sense to me for things that are physically possible, but recognizing the limits to growth has no political constituency.

For decades, Biden was the Senator from the State of DuPont (Delaware), which has some of the highest cancer rates on the continent due to extraordinary levels of petrochemical pollution.

 

Biden and fracking

Biden had an important job from 2009 to 2017 where he promoted nukes and help get fracking started.

Most of the foundation funded environmentalists who decried fracking "forgot" to mention it was Biden and Obama who presided over its large scale introduction, and the reason for starting up fracking was sharp declines in conventional oil and gas extraction. In 2019, two thirds of US domestic oil and two thirds of "natural" gas were extracted via fracking. Conventional oil in the US peaked in 1970 and conventional nat. gas peaked in 1973. The US would be rationing both if it wasn't for fracking. Damned if we drill, because of pollution, including climate change. Damned if we don't, because fracking heats cold cities in the winter, provides baseload for the western, eastern and Texas electric grids, and fracked oil powers transportation of food.

The Trump administration further increased oil and gas fracking - the reason they gutted anemic pollution regulations - which created the illusion of more economic growth. But this also sped up the decline of fracked fields and now, due to the pandemic, fracking companies are going bankrupt which has had massive reverberations. Perhaps President Biden will be able to increase fracking a little, but we may be past "peak fracking" for technical, geologic and financial reasons.

Joe Biden is originally from northeast Pennsylvania, where some of the best coal deposits used to exist. That coal helped power the industrial revolution in America but those supplies peaked in 1920. The first oil field in America was in Titusville, Pennsylvania but it is now a museum, not an oil supply (the oil is long gone).

www.peakchoice.org/peak-frack.html
Fracking Postponed Rationing

 

Biden's 2007 Presidential campaign theme:
ethnic warfare to break up Iraq to control their oil

When Biden ran for President in 2007, his main campaign theme was to break up Iraq into three new countries via ethnic cleansing to better control the oil. He got 3/4ths of the Senate to endorse that plan, which was Cheney's real goal for the invasion in 2003.

When I heard Biden would be VP for CIA Obama, I went from being 99% convinced that Obama had been pre-selected to 10,000% convinced. I was also convinced that Palin was put on McCain's ticket to ensure he would lose.

Biden supported Cheney's war plan for Iraq - breaking up that country into three new states via ethnic warfare to control the oil

www.oilempire.us/new-map.html
the Empire's New Middle East Map

www.oilempire.us/iraqoil.html
Iraqi oil fields and ethnicity

In 2007, Senator Biden had little, if any, traction with his Presidential quest. His primary issue for the primaries was his support for breaking up Iraq into three new countries -- using ethnic conflict to control the oil, the same goal that Dick Cheney had when he launched the war on Iraq. Biden's Presidential campaign was essentially his audition to be Vice President.

In 2007, I stated on this site that it seemed likely that Obama had been pre-selected to be Bush the Lesser's successor. His endorsement by Zbigniew Brzezinski seemed to be a not-so-subtle statement from the more powerful faction of the military industrial intelligence complex about their choice (and Obama had been a student of his at Columbia University, where Obama studied nuclear and foreign policy under Brzezinski's tutorage. In 2008, during the Democratic Party convention, Biden was announced as Obama's running mate and I went from being 99% sure that Obama would be the next President to being 10,000% convinced. (The selection of Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate seemed to be a way to guarantee a Republican loss.)

Now, Biden is trying again for the Presidency, but he is a hard sell. Old. Out of touch with the Democratic grassroots. A bit corrupt (the Ukrainian scandals are only part of the story). The main reason he is likely to win, apart from the elite support for his corporatist, militarist agenda, is that Trump has been so bad of a disaster than anyone else seems better in comparison.

Michael Moore says that Biden is this year's Hillary, in the sense that he is the elite's choice but not beloved by most of the Democratic voters.

It's probably most important to focus on Biden's background to understand how we got to the point where this warmonger is being marketed as the alleged alternative to the insanity of the Trump administration. If Biden is the answer, it's a really bad question.

Anagram: Joe Biden = I Need Job

 

 


 

Good Cop, Bad Cop and the Destruction of Iraq
(2008 observation on then Vice Presidential candidate Biden)

Senator Biden's failed Presidential campaign in 2007 was primarily focused on dismembering Iraq as a supposed solution to ethnic conflict between different groups that allegedly was not fueled by the US occupation. This partition would make it much easier for the US to control the oil fields -- and a long term goal is to similarly divide Iran and Saudi Arabia, creating a new country out of eastern Saudi Arabia, southern Iraq and western Iran that would have nearly all of the oil of those three countries. If this new "Arab Shia state" were combined with US allies Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar, this would give the US control over half of the world's remaining oil reserves. This is not a "failure" of US policy in Iraq, merely an extremely cynical Machiavellian strategy. However, this goal probably would require a President with a better image than George W. Bush to conclude.

Richard Nixon was the most environmental President of the past several decades. He signed most of the major environmental laws: Clean Air, Clean Water, National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species, etc. Nixon did not support these laws because he agreed with them, but because there was massive public pressure due to increasing pollution. Regardless of who is in the White House next year, everyone concerned with a livable planet needs to exert maximum efforts to demand accountability, democratic decisions and deep solutions to the ecological crises.

 

The Biden Resolution for Iraqi Partition

Democratic Party chair Howard Dean was on the Charlie Rose show (PBS) a week before the 2006 mid-term election, and suggested that partition could be a solution for the "Iraqi civil war."

It seems the empire is pursuing a "good cop, bad cop" strategy regarding the plunder of Iraq - the Bush / Cheney neo-cons create chaos and devastation, and the Democrats (and perhaps the old guard Republicans represented by James Baker, whose "recommendations" for Iraq will be unveiled after the election) will legitimize partition as part of an alleged new direction for the US war on Iraq. The fact that this fragmentation would be yet another drawing of boundaries by non-Arabs (the lines on the existing maps were devised by the British and French in 1920) that conveniently would make controlling the oil more practical for the US is unlikely to be mentioned in the mass media.

 

a crude map (artist unknown) showing how breaking up Iraq into three new countries would divide control of the oil

if coupled with partition of Iran and Saudi Arabia, as some influential war mongers have proposed, it would centralize control of the world's largest oil fields.

 

January 31, 2007
Biden's Presidential campaign promotes partition

Senator Biden (D-Delaware) announced he is joining the crowded field of candidates for Emperor. While few are likely to be interested in his campaign, one part of his platform is a dangerous meme likely to spread and become the "alternative" view of what to do about Iraq. Biden's advocacy for breaking Iraq into three entities is probably the Bush regime's goal from the start of the conflict, since smaller enclaves would make the oil easier to control. See the neo-con's new Middle East map for details.

Nearly everyone in the Middle East is aware that the existing national borders were delineated by Europeans after World War I, not by Arabs. These boundaries keep most of the oil wealth separated from most of the Arabs -- and the neo-liberal / neo-conservative campaign to create new lines on the map (with the excuse of escalating conflict in Iraq) would amplify this theft in the minds of many, if not most of the people in the Middle East. This development would confirm predictions that "civil war" would be stoked through deliberate strategies (not incompetence) in order to achieve this long term goal. In short, the neo-con battle plan is to dominate the oil rich regions through endless war -- but this risky strategy is likely to lead to nuclear war and definitely will waste the resources needed to mitigate Climate Change and Peak Oil.

It is extremely unlikely that Biden's campaign will result in much public support but it risks elevating the "partition" concept to a serious national discussion. This false solution would make the situation much worse, but that tragedy would be seen as "mission accomplished" in some elite circles.


www.democracynow.org/2008/8/25/a_debate_on_sen_joe_bidens

August 25, 2008
A Debate on Sen. Joe Biden’s Foreign Policy Record Between Steve Clemons and Stephen Zunes

STEPHEN ZUNES: Classic neocolonial divide and rule. The big division in Iraq is not between Sunni and Shia, but between sectarians and nationalists, and clearly Biden is siding with the more sectarian elements. The Iraqi constitution allows for some limited autonomy based on geography, on provinces, whereas Biden’s plan is based on ethnicity and religion, which is a real formula for disaster, because they don’t neatly follow geographical lines, all this intermingling, and despite what Biden said, the leading Sunni, Shia and secular parties have all denounced his plan, and even the US State Department said that Biden’s plan went way too far and was dangerous.


from a reader (August 23, 2008):

That Joe Biden, such an original. In case it isn't clear enough from Georgia, the Old Guard -- Brzezinski in particular -- is back running foreign policy:

 

Leslie H. Gelb, a former editor and columnist for The Times, is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.

New York Times
November 25, 2003
The Three-State Solution
By LESLIE H. GELB

President Bush's new strategy of transferring power quickly to Iraqis, and his critics' alternatives, share a fundamental flaw: all commit the United States to a unified Iraq, artificially and fatefully made whole from three distinct ethnic and sectarian communities. That has been possible in the past only by the application of overwhelming and brutal force.

President Bush wants to hold Iraq together by conducting democratic elections countrywide. But by his daily reassurances to the contrary, he only fans devastating rumors of an American pullout. Meanwhile, influential senators have called for more and better American troops to defeat the insurgency. Yet neither the White House nor Congress is likely to approve sending more troops.

And then there is the plea, mostly from outside the United States government, to internationalize the occupation of Iraq. The moment for multilateralism, however, may already have passed. Even the United Nations shudders at such a nightmarish responsibility.

The only viable strategy, then, may be to correct the historical defect and move in stages toward a three-state solution: Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center and Shiites in the south.

Almost immediately, this would allow America to put most of its money and troops where they would do the most good quickly -- with the Kurds and Shiites. The United States could extricate most of its forces from the so-called Sunni Triangle, north and west of Baghdad, largely freeing American forces from fighting a costly war they might not win. American officials could then wait for the troublesome and domineering Sunnis, without oil or oil revenues, to moderate their ambitions or suffer the consequences.

This three-state solution has been unthinkable in Washington for decades. After the Iranian revolution in 1979, a united Iraq was thought necessary to counter an anti-American Iran. Since the gulf war in 1991, a whole Iraq was deemed essential to preventing neighbors like Turkey, Syria and Iran from picking at the pieces and igniting wider wars.

But times have changed. The Kurds have largely been autonomous for years, and Ankara has lived with that. So long as the Kurds don't move precipitously toward statehood or incite insurgencies in Turkey or Iran, these neighbors will accept their autonomy. It is true that a Shiite self-governing region could become a theocratic state or fall into an Iranian embrace. But for now, neither possibility seems likely.

There is a hopeful precedent for a three-state strategy: Yugoslavia after World War II. In 1946, Marshal Tito pulled together highly disparate ethnic groups into a united Yugoslavia. A Croat himself, he ruled the country from Belgrade among the majority and historically dominant Serbs. Through clever politics and personality, Tito kept the peace peacefully.

When Tito died in 1980, several parts of Yugoslavia quickly declared their independence. The Serbs, with superior armed forces and the arrogance of traditional rulers, struck brutally against Bosnian Muslims and Croats.

Europeans and Americans protested but -- stunningly and unforgivably -- did little at first to prevent the violence. Eventually they gave the Bosnian Muslims and Croats the means to fight back, and the Serbs accepted separation. Later, when Albanians in the Serb province of Kosovo rebelled against their cruel masters, the United States and Europe had to intervene again. The result there will be either autonomy or statehood for Kosovo.

The lesson is obvious: overwhelming force was the best chance for keeping Yugoslavia whole, and even that failed in the end. Meantime, the costs of preventing the natural states from emerging had been terrible.

The ancestors of today's Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds have been in Mesopotamia since before modern history. The Shiites there, unlike Shiites elsewhere in the Arab world, are a majority. The Sunnis of the region gravitate toward pan-Arabism. The non-Arab Kurds speak their own language and have always fed their own nationalism.

The Ottomans ruled all the peoples of this land as they were: separately. In 1921, Winston Churchill cobbled the three parts together for oil's sake under a monarch backed by British armed forces. The Baathist Party took over in the 1960's, with Saddam Hussein consolidating its control in 1979, maintaining unity through terror and with occasional American help.

Today, the Sunnis have a far greater stake in a united Iraq than either the Kurds or the Shiites. Central Iraq is largely without oil, and without oil revenues, the Sunnis would soon become poor cousins.

The Shiites might like a united Iraq if they controlled it -- which they could if those elections Mr. Bush keeps promising ever occur. But the Kurds and Sunnis are unlikely to accept Shiite control, no matter how democratically achieved. The Kurds have the least interest in any strong central authority, which has never been good for them.

A strategy of breaking up Iraq and moving toward a three-state solution would build on these realities. The general idea is to strengthen the Kurds and Shiites and weaken the Sunnis, then wait and see whether to stop at autonomy or encourage statehood.

The first step would be to make the north and south into self-governing regions, with boundaries drawn as closely as possible along ethnic lines. Give the Kurds and Shiites the bulk of the billions of dollars voted by Congress for reconstruction. In return, require democratic elections within each region, and protections for women, minorities and the news media.

Second and at the same time, draw down American troops in the Sunni Triangle and ask the United Nations to oversee the transition to self-government there. This might take six to nine months; without power and money, the Sunnis may cause trouble.

For example, they might punish the substantial minorities left in the center, particularly the large Kurdish and Shiite populations in Baghdad. These minorities must have the time and the wherewithal to organize and make their deals, or go either north or south. This would be a messy and dangerous enterprise, but the United States would and should pay for the population movements and protect the process with force.

The Sunnis could also ignite insurgencies in the Kurdish and Shiite regions. To counter this, the United States would already have redeployed most of its troops north and south of the Sunni Triangle, where they could help arm and train the Kurds and Shiites, if asked.

The third part of the strategy would revolve around regional diplomacy. All the parties will suspect the worst of one another -- not without reason. They will all need assurances about security. And if the three self-governing regions were to be given statehood, it should be done only with the consent of their neighbors. The Sunnis might surprise and behave well, thus making possible a single and loose confederation. Or maybe they would all have to live with simple autonomy, much as Taiwan does with respect to China.

For decades, the United States has worshiped at the altar of a unified yet unnatural Iraqi state. Allowing all three communities within that false state to emerge at least as self-governing regions would be both difficult and dangerous. Washington would have to be very hard-headed, and hard-hearted, to engineer this breakup. But such a course is manageable, even necessary, because it would allow us to find Iraq's future in its denied but natural past.

Leslie H. Gelb, a former editor and columnist for The Times, is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.

 


 

"it's very encouraging to me that Joe Biden is the incoming vice president. He has been the prime proponent of a decentralized Iraq. And although in the campaign Senator McCain described his plan as, I think, a cockamamie idea, it is in fact what the Bush administration has done in part. The Bush administration, in 2007, decided to finance a Sunni army, which is the Awakening. And that's why we've had success. Biden would only take this a next step and encourage the Sunnis to form their own region"
-- Peter Galbraith, senior diplomatic fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, National Public Radio All Things Considered, November 12, 2008
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96922193&ft=1&f=1001

 

Peter Galbraith NPR interview on Iraq

Peter Galbraith, senior diplomatic fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, National Public Radio All Things Considered, November 12, 2008.
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96922193&ft=1&f=1001

SIEGEL: Well, our guest today has written in support of the partition of Iraq, the idea of splitting the country up into three countries, Sunni, Shia, and Kurd. Peter Galbraith is a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia and now senior diplomatic fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. And Peter Galbraith, partition, still a good idea?

Mr. PETER GALBRAITH (Senior Diplomatic Fellow, Center For Arms Control and Non-Proliferation): Well, I don't actually advocate partition. My point is that the country has already broken up, and the United States should not be in the business of putting it back together. We have, in the north, Kurdistan, which is, in all regards, an independent country except it doesn't have international recognition with its own army, its own government.

And now between the Shiites and the Sunnis, there are two separate armies. There's a Shiite army. It's the Iraqi army, but it's dominated by the Shiites. And in the Sunni areas, there's now the Awakening, a hundred-thousand-man-strong militia. And it is because of the Awakening, and not so much the surge of U.S. troops, that there's been this enormous decline in attacks by al-Qaeda. But they remain very hostile to the Iraqi government, and the Iraqi government sees them as a bigger threat than al-Qaeda.

SIEGEL: Are you satisfied by the degree to which the incoming Obama administration - what has been the Obama campaign - sees as the reality of Iraqi politics? Is it close enough to what you see as the reality of Iraqi politics?

Mr. GALBRAITH: Yes. Of course, it's very encouraging to me that Joe Biden is the incoming vice president. He has been the prime proponent of a decentralized Iraq. And although in the campaign Senator McCain described his plan as, I think, a cockamamie idea, it is in fact what the Bush administration has done in part. The Bush administration, in 2007, decided to finance a Sunni army, which is the Awakening. And that's why we've had success. Biden would only take this a next step and encourage the Sunnis to form their own region, which would control that army just as the Kurdistan region controls the Peshmerga, which is the Kurdistan army.

SIEGEL: Iraq has prickly relations with - certainly with two of its neighbors. Turkey is distressed at the possibility of a de facto or truly independent Kurdistan on its border. And the Iranians have, it seems, have been intervening in a variety of ways. Is a decentralized, loosely federalized, some would say partitioned, Iraq, is it capable of actually defending its own interests against bigger neighbors?

Mr. GALBRAITH: Well, Iraq is not, today, defending its interests. The Iranians wield enormous influence because the United States actually paved the way for Iran's allies to become the government of Iraq. With regard to the Kurds, actually there's been a change in attitude on the part of Turkey. There was a time when they thought the idea of an independent Kurdistan, or a de facto independent Kurdistan, was an almost existential threat to Turkey. But increasingly Turks recognize, first, that this is an accomplished fact. It's already happened. And second that there are opportunities. After all, they share in common they're secular, they're pro-Western like the Turks, aspire to be democratic, and they're not Arabs.

SIEGEL: Should the Obama administration, once it takes over, should it have a new diplomatic initiative in Iraq? And is there an occasion for some Iraqi version of the Dayton peace conference that addressed the war in the Balkans some years ago?

Mr. GALBRAITH: Yes. There are two things that the United States can do that would enhance stability in Iraq as it leaves. First, to try and solve the territorial dispute over Kirkuk and other disputed areas between the Kurds and the Arabs, and secondly to work out a modus vivendi between the Iraqi government and the Shiite-led army and the Sunni Awakening as to who will control what territory. And a Dayton-style process, with a tough negotiator like Richard Holbrooke, if he doesn't end up being secretary of state, I think that's exactly what the Obama administration should look at doing.

SIEGEL: So, in that argument, it's not, let's try to do away with this conflict between Shia and Sunni and armed groups, but rather, let's try to negotiate a better, more equitable deal and more stable deal between the two groups that will continue to exist for the near future.

Mr. GALBRAITH: Precisely. And if we can minimize the things that Sunnis and Shiites are going to fight over, it may be, over time, that they will find it in their interest to have much greater cooperation and that voluntarily they'll build a stronger Iraqi state. I think it's unlikely the Kurds would ever join that, but I think it's quite possible as between the Sunnis and Shiites.

SIEGEL: Well, Peter Galbraith, thank you very much for talking with us today.

Mr. GALBRAITH: Well, thank you.

SIEGEL: That's former U.S. ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith, who is author of a new book called "Unintended Consequences: How War In Iraq Strengthened America's Enemies."

emphasis added

 


 

www.observer.com/20070205/20070205_Jason_Horowitz_pageone_newsstory1-2.html

Biden Unbound: Lays Into Clinton, Obama, Edwards
Loquacious Senator, Democratic Candidate on Hillary: ‘Four of 10 Is the Max You Can Get?’ Edwards ‘Doesn’t Know What He’s Talking About’
By Jason Horowitz

.... By contrast with what Mr. Biden describes alternately as his opponents’ caution and their detachment from reality, the Senator from Delaware has for months been pushing a comprehensive plan to split Iraq into autonomous Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish ethnic regions that is controversial, to say the least.
Under the plan, local policing and laws will be the responsibility of regional authorities. Most of the American troops would be withdrawn, with small numbers remaining to help with anti-terrorism operations. The ensuing chaos from ethnic migrations within Iraq would be contained with the help of political pressure created by a conference of Iraq’s neighbors.
But the idea of an American endorsement of Iraqi federation along those lines has drawn criticism from just about every ideological corner of the foreign-policy establishment. Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, another potential 2008 candidate who played a major role in negotiating the peace talks that ended the war in Bosnia, said in a recent interview that the Biden plan would have people in mixed cities like Baghdad “fleeing for their lives.” Richard Perle, one of the chief architects of the war in Iraq, who resigned from his advisory position at the Pentagon in 2003 after a conflict-of-interest scandal, called the idea “harebrained.” And perhaps most notably, the original author of the partition plan, former Council on Foreign Relations president Leslie Gelb, has suggested that spiraling chaos on the ground in Iraq may have already rendered it unworkable.
Mr. Biden counters their criticism by insisting that Iraq has already fractured along ethnic lines, and that the only pragmatic approach at this point is to police the process in a way that could prevent a wider civil war and, eventually, lead to a sort of stability.
“You have to give them breathing room,” he said.
The Iraq he envisions has three ethnically homogenous enclaves, with a central government responsible for securing the country’s international borders and distributing oil revenues.
He’d put the Shiite majority in the south, limiting their geographic control but keeping them from being drawn into a wider Sunni-Shiite conflict.
He’d move the Sunni majority into the oil-poor Anbar province in the West, but they would be guaranteed a cut of oil revenues worth billions of dollars. Mr. Biden’s hope is that the oil money and relative calm would drain the loyal Baathist insurgency of support while simultaneously making the province less amenable to Al Qaeda provocateurs.
“The argument that you make with Sunni tribal leaders is, ‘You are not going to get back to the point where you run the show,’” said Mr. Biden. They will have to be made to understand that “you get a much bigger piece of the pie by giving up a little of the pie.”
He’d keep the Kurds up in the north, where they already enjoy a measure of de facto autonomy, but would seek guarantees that they would not take it upon themselves to purge Sunni residents from the mixed city of Kirkuk, or to lay exclusive claim to the enormous oil resources in that region, or to secede from Iraq by forming an independent Kurdistan.
Mr. Biden said he has made the argument to Kurdish leaders over the course of his seven trips to Iraq as follows: “You will be eaten alive by the Turks and the Iranians, they will attack you, there will be an all-out war.”
The clear implication is that the United States, not for the first time, would be unable to protect them. “I don’t see how we could,” he said.
Mr. Biden disagrees with foreign leaders like Britain’s Tony Blair and Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf, who say that the key to fixing Iraq’s problems is solving the dispute between Israel and Palestinians.
“They are wrong, because I think it is a veiled way to do what the Europeans and the Arabists have always wanted to do, which is back Israel into a corner,” he said. “They still blame Israel.”
Mr. Biden says that support for his Iraq plan is growing. The influential New York Senator Chuck Schumer has declared at various times that he supports the plan—albeit in an uncharacteristically quiet manner—as has Michael O’Hanlon, a prominent Iraq policy expert at the Brookings Institution.
But their support, for Mr. Biden, is almost an afterthought. If one thing is clear about him, it is that he doesn’t mind being alone.
“They may be politically right, and I may be politically wrong,” he said. “But I believe I am substantively right, and their substantive approaches are not very deep and will not get us where I want to go.”


 

Senate Endorses Plan to Divide Iraq
By Shailagh Murray
The Washington Post
Wednesday 26 September 2007
Action shows rare bipartisan consensus.

Showing rare bipartisan consensus over war policy, the Senate overwhelmingly endorsed a political settlement for Iraq that would divide the country into three semi-autonomous regions.

The plan, conceived by Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), was approved 75-23 as a non-binding resolution, with 26 Republican votes. It would not force President Bush to take any action, but it represents a significant milestone in the Iraq debate, carving out common ground in a debate that has grown increasingly polarized and focused on military strategy.

The Biden plan envisions a federal government system for Iraq, consisting of separate regions for Iraq's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish populations. The structure is spelled out in Iraq's constitution, but Biden would initiate local and regional diplomatic efforts to hasten its evolution.

"This has genuine bipartisan support, and I think that's a very hopeful sign," Biden said.

One key Republican supporter was Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), who under strong White House pressure last week abruptly withdrew his support for a proposal to extend home leaves for U.S. troops. Numerous Republicans considered supporting the extension, but they backed off when Warner reversed his stance. The veteran GOP lawmaker called the vote on the Biden plan "the high-water mark" for bipartisan efforts on Iraq this year.

Warner said the vote represented a de facto acknowledgement of the now widely held view that Iraq's long-term problems cannot be solved militarily. "This amendment builds on that foundation," said Warner. "This amendment brings into sharp focus the need for diplomacy."

The resolution collected an unusually diverse group of co-sponsors who disagree sharply on other aspects of the war, in particular how long U.S. combat troops should remain. The list ranges from conservative Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), a GOP presidential contender, to liberal Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.).

"We can't walk away from Iraq," said Hutchison. "That would make all the sacrifices that have been made irrelevant. But we do have a potential solution that can save American lives in the future."

Boxer said: "I see here a light at the end of a very, very dark tunnel. A darkness that is impacting our nation. It's impacting the Senate. In a way, we are paralyzed."

The vote also was a political boon for Biden, one of the Democrats' most respected foreign policy voices, yet a long-shot for his party's 2008 presidential nomination. The floor debate, which started last week, provided the struggling candidate with a moment in the spotlight - and Biden made the most of it. He spent hours on the Senate floor, held two news conferences, and placed an op-ed Monday in the State, a newspaper in Columbia, S.C., an early 2008 primary state.

Two of Biden's competitors, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), voted with him. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) missed the vote, as did Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a GOP presidential candidate and a leading war supporter.

Biden has made his Iraq plan the centerpiece of his 2008 candidacy, and he will likely herald his Senate success in a Democratic debate tonight in New Hampshire.


 

www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1555130,00.html
Sunday, Nov. 5, 2006
The Case for Dividing Iraq
With the country descending into civil war, a noted diplomat and author argues why partition may be the U.S.'s only exit strategy
By Peter W. Galbraith

... In fact, the Sunnis may have the most to gain from partition. The Sunni insurgency feeds on popular hostility not just to the Americans but to a Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi government. Most Sunnis don't support al-Qaeda and its imitators, but they often prefer them to Iraqi security forces, which are seen as complicit in the killings of Sunnis. If the Sunnis were to establish their own region, they could have an army and provide for their own security. Since Iraq's known oil fields are in the Shi'ite south and the Kurdish north, the Sunnis do have reason to fear being stuck in the middle with no resources of their own. So, for partition to work, the Kurds and Shi'ites would have to guarantee the Sunnis a proportionate share of Iraq's oil revenues for a period of time, as they have already agreed to do. Over the long term, exploration for oil in the largely unexplored Sunni areas provides the region its best prospect for revenues. [emphasis added]


 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20060916/cm_huffpost/029566
Tom Hayden: Withdraw from Iraq Or Carve It Up?
By Tom Hayden
September 16,2006
Yahoo News


 

www.truthout.org/docs_2006/081507S.shtml
Iraq Set to Disintegrate, New Study Warns
Der Spiegel
Wednesday 15 August 2007

It's no secret that Iraq is a politically, ethnically and religiously fractured country. But a new study released in Berlin on Wednesday argues that federalism remains the country's last, best hope. Otherwise, it may fall apart completely.


 

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17078.htm

Information Warfare, Psy-ops and the Power of Myth
By Mike Whitney
02/15/07 "ICH" --- -

The bombing of the Golden Dome Mosque in Samarra is the cornerstone of Bush’s psychological operations (psy-ops) in Iraq. That’s why it is critical to have an independent investigation and discover who is really responsible. The bombing has been used as a “Pearl Harbor-type” event which has deflected responsibility for the 650,000 Iraqi casualties and more than 3 million refugees. These are the victims of American occupation not civil war.
The bombing was concocted by men who believe that they can control the public through perception management. In practical terms, this means that they create events which can be used to support their far-right doctrine. In this case, the destruction of the mosque has been used to confuse the public about the real origins of the rising sectarian tensions and hostilities. The fighting between Sunni and Shiite is the predictable upshot of random bombings and violence which bears the signature of covert operations carried out by intelligence organizations. Most of the pandemonium in Iraq is the result of counterinsurgency operations (black-ops) on a massive scale not civil war.

 

McCain - Biden's PNAC letter and war resolution

Project for a New American Century

www.newamericancentury.org/russia-20040928.htm

An Open Letter to the Heads of State and Government
Of the European Union and NATO
September 28, 2004

signatories included Senators John McCain and Joe Biden.


www.wsws.org/articles/2008/aug2008/bide-a25_prn.shtml

Obama selects Biden to reassure the US ruling elite

By Patrick Martin
25 August 2008

In the 1990s, with Bill Clinton in the White House, Biden was one of the principal proponents of US intervention in the former Yugoslavia, a role that he describes in his campaign autobiography, published last year, as his proudest achievement in foreign policy. In the mid-1990s he called for the US to arm the Bosnian Muslim regime against Serbia, and then advocated a direct US attack on Serbia during the 1999 Kosovo crisis, joining with a like-minded Republican senator to introduce the McCain-Biden Kosovo Resolution, authorizing Clinton to use “all necessary force” against Serbia.

 

Biden's New World Order speech

www.udel.edu/PR/UpDate/93/9/19.html

UpDate - Vol. 12, No. 9, Page 1
October 29, 1992
Sen. Biden returns to campus during United Nations week

U.S. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee since 1972, said last Thursday he did not understand the importance of collective security for the nations of the world until he graduated from the University of Delaware in 1965.

In a speech celebrating United Nations Week, Biden said professor emeritus Leroy Bennett and other political science professors who taught him were wise to espouse the value of the United Nations as a valuable peacekeeping tool.

Meeting with world leaders, Biden said he has "on more than one occasion, been brought back in my mind to classes I took with Dr. Bennett," a man Biden called "well ahead of his time."

In his speech in Clayton Hall, "On the Threshold of the New World Order: A Rebirth for the United Nations," Biden said the world's leaders must adopt a new understanding of security. "Collective security today must encompass not only the security of nations," he said, "but also mankind's security in a global environment that has proven vulnerable to debilitating changes wrought by man's own endeavors.

"Thus, in setting an American agenda for a new world order, we must begin with a profound alteration in traditional thought," he said.