WP op-ed, "The Minimum Necessary": Senator Joe Biden, Plan for Iraq

[DeepModem Mom]

The Minimum Necessary
By Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Sunday, November 19, 2006; Page B07

As the Baker-Hamilton commission deliberates recommendations for Iraq, it faces a tremendous opportunity and responsibility. The opportunity is to help generate for the president and Congress a bipartisan way forward. The responsibility is to make the hard choices that are required to turn our Iraq policy around. If it fails to make those choices, its efforts will be in vain.

Our current policy in Iraq is a failure. We are past the point of an open-ended commitment. We are past the point of adding more troops. We are past the point of vague policy prescriptions. It is not an answer just to stay. Nor is it an answer -- though it may become a necessity -- just to go with no concern for what follows. The fundamental question we must answer is whether, as we begin to leave Iraq, there are still concrete steps we can take to avoid leaving chaos behind.

Six months ago Les Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, and I proposed a detailed answer to that question, which can be found at http://www.planforiraq.com. We had two fundamental premises: first, that the main challenge in Iraq is sectarian strife, for which there is no military solution; second, that putting all of our chips on building a strong central government cannot pay off because there is no trust within or of the government and no capacity on the part of the government to deliver basic services to the Iraqi people.

We argued instead for a strong federal system, as provided for in the Iraqi constitution, that gives its main groups breathing room in regions while preserving a central government to deal with truly common concerns; a fair sharing of oil revenue to make those regions economically viable; a jobs program to deny the militia new recruits; and a major diplomatic effort to secure support for a political settlement from Iraq's neighbors.

Doing all those things would enable most of our troops to leave Iraq by the end of 2007, with a small residual force to contend with concentrations of terrorists....

(Senator Biden is the incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/17/AR2006111701590.html

[aquart]

1. Charming. Is this a plan for Disney World?

Senator Biden seems to believe that the US is still in a position to act as honest broker. He must think Bill Clinton is still president.

[bananas]

2. That's why Rangel is making this personal for people.

Otherwise there will be a compromise where we have a phased withdrawal over many years starting with a 20,000 troop increase.