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(Regarding article, “Biden’s Iraq plan scores Senate win,” Sept. 27.)
Sen. Joseph Biden’s (D-Del.) plan for Iraq is problematic in two ways.
First, while supporters of this non-binding amendment to the defense authorization bill believe they are challenging the president’s Iraq policy, they are instead reinforcing the idea that it is for policymakers in Washington to decide the fate of the Iraqi nation.
Second, even though Biden and 75 other senators have taken a good step by recognizing that a political solution is required due to the non-existence of military solutions, the reality is that partitioning has been tried many times before, including in Iraq, without success.
Partition is one of the favorite tools of occupational forces withdrawing from territory. Sometimes this is done to preserve influence in certain areas to cut losses, and sometimes it is done to try and mitigate the genocidal fallout from the policies of occupation. Great Britain partitioned Palestine and the Indian subcontinent in 1947. In both cases what followed was ethnic cleansing, as people found themselves on the wrong side of the lines, and multiple wars over territorial sovereignty. In both cases, a state of conflict continues to exist 60 years later.
Iraq itself was partitioned by the British in 1921 during a failed occupation eerily similar to that of today. The nation of Kuwait was carved out of Iraq by the British, a fact that directly led to the first Gulf War almost 70 years later that drew in the United States.
Biden and his allies prefer to point to the division of the former Yugoslavia as a success story. However, the sustainability of division based on ethnicity is far from assured, as the region remains troubled. One would hardly wish a process of “Balkanization” on any people. To ignore other, more relevant, historical comparisons is intellectually lazy, dishonest and ultimately unfair to the people of Iraq and the United States.
The United States should leave the future of Iraq up to the Iraqis, including their political processes and distribution of resources. True opposition to President Bush’s failed Iraq policies requires a firm commitment to the self-determination of the Iraqi people and not just another imposed outcome with a proven track record of ensuring generations of conflict.
Arlington, Va.
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