2008 Getting Out of Iraq: The View from Iowa, Part 2
posted by on August 20 at 11:00 AM
If you’re not a weekend Slog reader, here are some links to catch you up:
On Friday I dissed the incredibly early hour of the recent Democratic debate in Iowa. On Saturday I found myself on a plane (and then another plane), headed to said early debate. I landed in Des Moines, which turned out to be lovely and of course crawling with Democratic operatives (so much so that I had a somewhat interesting brush with Hillaryland in an even more interesting elevator). Then on Sunday, I woke up ridiculously early (but not as early as these people), went to the not-so-glamorous press room to watch the debate, and then walked over to the spin room, where I took a bunch of pictures and got spun by the likes of David Axelrod, Howard Dean, and Mike Gravel.
Yesterday on the way home, I said I thought that one of the most interesting aspects of the debate in Iowa this weekend was that it showed great disagreement among the Democratic candidates about how, exactly, the U.S. should get out of Iraq.
I’m working on a post about those differences of opinion now, but while I’m doing that, check out the new television ads from Joe Biden. He’s trying to use this question of how to get of Iraq to differentiate himself, and is suggesting that he’s the only candidate willing to tell the truth about Iraq (that it needs to be partitioned) and the only candidate with the experience (as the long-time head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee) to figure out a workable plan for getting U.S. troops out of Iraq without provoking ethnic cleansing or regional war.
Joe Biden for secretray of State.
Delaware only has 3 electoral votes, so he is pretty worthless as VP.
Meanwhile, if Hillary wins, who would replace her as the NY Senator?
Bill C.????
Andrew Cuomo??
If Obama wins, who would replace him as the Ill. Senator?
Jesse Jackson Jr.??
Gov. S
kucinich, please. i bet his smoking hot wife made him get a guiche.
biden is my fave. he seems the most 'real' to me- and you can tell that a lot of the things that he says aren't the scripted talking point garbage that the other candidates stick to. I wish he had a chance.
Partition is a great idea. It's the only option that gets us out in a reasonable amount of time AND has even a remote change of not leaving Iraq one big genocidal inferno. But it leaves Iran's proxies w/ all the oily parts. Oh well. Such is the price of failure.
Partition is a horrible idea. The Shia-Sunni-Kurd division is only one of many and very simplistic, and those pushing for it are basically encouraging genocide as in Yugoslavia.
Juan Cole does a good job of discussing this from time to time on his blog if you want to read it from someone who actually has some credibility.
One of the better ideas I've heard from a presidential candidate was from a Republican--Tommy Thompson, who is now out of the race. He called for a federation by province (there are 18 of them) that splits revenue 1/3 between the central government, 1/3 to the provincial governments, and 1/3 to payments to individual citizens. (Note: none of those profits go to US companies.) That allows for different groups to have some local control without leading to a spiraling genocidal dissolution of the country. It also gives people at every level of the country a stake in its future. That's the kind of thing that can forestall genocide.
Because of this, Biden is a bad choice for president or Secretary of State. He'd kick as Secretary of Defense, though. Richardson is the guy we need at state, assuming the Democratic nominee (who won't be him) wins.
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