And in the Upper Chamber… at No Man’s Blog

…there’s Joe Biden, the Senator from Delaware and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Not to be outdone by John Murtha, Biden is offering a “mainstream, articulate, and clean” plan for bringing peace to Iraq while getting U.S. troops out of the war-torn nation.

Biden wants to repeal the 2002 congressional resolution that authorized President Bush to take military action in Iraq, suggesting that the situation in Iraq has subsequently changed in two essential ways: 1) Saddam Hussein has been deposed, and 2) weapons of mass destruction were never found. Regime change has been achieved and the threat of WMDs is no longer an issue says Biden, and it’s time to revise Mr. Bush’s Iraq charter. Biden wants to give the military a “much narrower mission statement.” According to Congressional Quarterly, “Biden said this new resolution should clearly state that U.S. troops should continue to combat terrorists and train Iraqis, but also make clear that U.S. troops will ‘responsibly draw down’ and not stay in Iraq indefinitely.” This “responsible draw down” of U.S. forces in Iraq—which should be completed by the close of 2008, adds Biden—will provide a nearly immediate incentive for the Iraqi government to get its act together. “The best way to focus Iraq’s leaders on the political compromises they must make is to make it clear to them that we are leaving,” he said.

But this is only half of what Senator Biden has to offer. In conjunction with Leslie H. Gelb, a former president of the non-profit organization Council on Foreign Relations, Biden has authored a plan to address the sectarian violence that’s killing hundreds of Sunnis, Shi’a, and Kurds (not to mention Coalition soldiers). The Biden-Gelb plan “proposes essentially partitioning Iraq into a loose federation of autonomous Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni regions.” The Quarterly continues:

Biden’s efforts to promote this proposal took him on Thursday to the Brookings Institution, a policy think tank in Washington, D.C. He described the plan as ‘federalism,’ and likened it to the 1995 accords signed in Dayton, Ohio, that aimed to quell sectarian carnage in Bosnia by dividing the Balkan nation into separate ethnic federations of Bosnian Muslims, Croats and Serbs.
[…]
‘Ladies and gentlemen, it is my assertion that federalism is Iraq’s best possible future,’ Biden said. ‘But unless we help make federalism work for all Iraqis, the violence will not stop.’
[…]
Biden’s plan also would call for a ‘major diplomatic offensive’ to engage support of countries that share the Middle Eastern region with Iraq — and also calls for withdrawal of American troops by the end of 2008.

So Senator Biden’s first and (one would assume) best instinct to address the Iraq problem is to engage–à la the House of Representatives—in pointless word mongering? Rewrite the 2002 congressional resolution, eh? Well, that’s really going to help—to essentially (and retroactively) “un-authorize” the president from doing something that has already been done. (Quite irrevocably done, I might add.) Not only is the idea absurd, it’s also dumb. Did I mention that it would also be an unforgivable waste of time?

Okay, the word mongering thing aside, he also wants to set a fixed—and artificial—deadline for the cessation of military operations in Iraq. It appears to be the old “we’re out of there by the end of 2008 come hell or high water” deal. As if we haven’t heard that one already. Wonderful job, Senator. Brilliant! Did you think that one up all by yourself?

But the thing that really gets my goat is the ‘federalism’ idiocy. What have our troops been fighting for—and dying for—in Iraq for the past four years if not for the goal of a workable, peaceful, and unified Iraq? Is he suggesting that the American people—the troops in particular—would be willing to casually toss aside the thousands of sacrifices that have been made on the alter of the promise of a democratic Iraq and settle instead for a lesser alternative?

Joe Biden

And has Joe Biden considered the ramifications for ordinary Iraqi citizens who happen to have the misfortune to live in the wrong region of Iraq? What of the Sunni family that suddenly finds itself living in the heart of an artificial Shi’a territory? Or the Shi’a family whose home is currently in Anbar Province? As far as I can tell, this stupid, stupid plan could very well result in a humanitarian crisis of massive proportions, as Sunni refugees flee for the safety of the Sunni zone, and Kurds run for Kurdistan, and the Shi’a…well, you get the idea. And is Mr. Biden foolish enough to believe that this inevitable diaspora would somehow unfold in a peaceful way—that displaced Iraqis would be able to move their families and possessions through a hostile zone without being harassed, robbed, or even killed by those from rival sects?

Apparently Mr. Biden hasn’t given any of these things any thought at all.