BIDEN, JOSEPH: ...usual, gets to the crux of the issue.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: Look, here is the way I look at it. I think I will try to break these things out. My friend Senator Lugar, whom I think is the most informed man in the Congress on foreign policy, is used to my colloquial ways of expressing things so he will probably understand me better than most because he had to deal with me for 30 years-plus.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: I try to devolve this, to use a Washington word, into sort of big chunks. You basically have two options here.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: No. 1, do you continue with a policy that was well intended by our Government, the President, the administration, of attempting to establish a strong central democratic government in Baghdad that in fact has the capacity to gain the faith and trust of the Sunni,
BIDEN, JOSEPH: Shia, and Kurds so that they will entrust to that central government their well-being, in terms of security, in terms of economic growth, and in terms of political reconciliation or do you have to reach a point that I have reached,
BIDEN, JOSEPH: and
BIDEN, JOSEPH: reached some time ago, of recognizing that is a bridge too far; that the only way in which you will be able to stop the warring factions from killing each other is essentially give them some breathing room under their federal Constitution which says--I am quoting from their Constitution: The Republic of Iraq is a single,
BIDEN, JOSEPH: independent, federal state.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: What I look back to, I say to my friend from Virginia, is this can't be built up from the village up. I acknowledge the requirement that the leaders of the Sunnis and the Shia and the Kurds--and there are multiple claimants to that leadership; I know my friend knows that--those claimants have to conclude their self-interest is better realized in a federal system.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: The Kurds have clearly recognized that. The Kurds made it clear when Senator Hagel and I got smuggled into Irbil, back before the war began, that they weren't in on any deal that wasn't a federal system giving them pretty significant autonomy
BIDEN, JOSEPH: The Shia have now reached that conclusion themselves, with notable exceptions--Sadr being one of them. But, for example, the Vice President -- the Shia Vice President of the, for lack of a phrase I will call the central government the existing government--is totally supportive of what I am proposing and he said so publicly and said so at this conference in Ramadi which I attended a few weeks ago
BIDEN, JOSEPH: The Sunnis up to now have been the odd folks out because they look at it, as my friend clearly knows, and they say: Look, we live in this place called Anbar Province, the majority of us. We don't have much out here but rock and shale.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: There is not much else out here. All the oil is in the north and all the oil is in the south and if you have regional governments and the oil is controlled by the north and the south, we don't get anything.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: But here is what has happened. There is a bit of, as we Catholics say, an epiphany occurring. I will tell my friend in confidence who it is but I don't want to publicly--he is an Iraqi leader who is one of the leading Sunni leaders in the country,
BIDEN, JOSEPH: who used the following quote with me in the 4 hours we were together in Ramadi.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: He said--I am paraphrasing the first part--I initially disagreed with your plan. Now I am quoting.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: There has been a struggle I have had between my heart and my head. My heart has told me up to now that we Sunnis could play a major role in governing this country again, from the center. My head tells me that will not happen anytime soon and our fate lies in a regional system.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: But we need access to resources.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: He said: But don't quote me yet, Senator, because I have to work on my fellow tribal leaders out here, and others.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: Look what is happening with the Turks. The Turks initially were absolutely opposed to this. But as they have begun to figure it out, they realize that if we continue on the path we are on, American patience with keeping the cork in the bottle is not going to be sustained for the next 2 years and that when we leave,
BIDEN, JOSEPH: absent a political settlement, there will be not a splitting of Iraq into three parts, there will be a fracture of Iraq into multiple parts. But guess what they figured out.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: Kurdistan will become a de facto independent country. They will be able to say in Kurdistan: Hey, we didn't do this. There was nobody to deal with. And they have all of a sudden begun to understand that it is bad enough,
BIDEN, JOSEPH: from the Turkish standpoint to have a quasi-independent--and it is not even that--region called Kurdistan, within defined borders of a country called Iraq; it is a very different thing to have a quasi-independent Kurdistan,
BIDEN, JOSEPH: when you have 4 million Kurds sitting in their eastern mountains.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: So all of a sudden they are figuring this out. ``Figuring out'' sounds derogatory, and I do not mean it that way. They are looking at their alternatives and saying: OK, a federal system in an Iraq that is united is a whole lot better than a de facto independent state
BIDEN, JOSEPH: The Iranians. The Iranians have a dilemma. The Iranians have at least five major militia forces among the Shia of Iraq. Some they like, some they do not like. As my friend from Indiana knows, you have a group down around Basra,
BIDEN, JOSEPH: as the British are pulling out, who are organized pretty well.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: As the British two-star said to me: They are like Mafia dons waiting for us to leave to see who claims the territory--who actually argued that Basra should be an independent country because they have access to the gulf,
BIDEN, JOSEPH: they have oil, and they have four provinces they can put together.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: Well, guess what. That is not very well regarded by the Badr Brigade, folks, and Sadr is going: Whoa, whoa, wait a minute.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: So this creates a dilemma. The splintering of Iraq creates a dilemma for even the Iranians who do not want to do us any favors at all. The generic point I am making is, as time has passed, and I will use Bosnia as an example,
BIDEN, JOSEPH: when we first started off talking about what, in essence, became of the Dayton Peace Accords, you did not have any takers. And it only got to the point where you had the Croats and the Serbs concluding they could not dominate.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: They could not control Bosnia-Herzegovina.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: That is when they all began to think, you know, the blood and treasure that was--exceedingly what has happened, once they got to the point where they realized the gun was not going to get their solution,
BIDEN, JOSEPH: they became, very reluctantly, but they became much more acclimated to the notion of what the Dayton Peace Accords did.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: The bottom line is, asking me that question a year ago, I would not have said to you that internally the leaders among the Shia, the Kurds, and the Sunnis will be more inclined to accept this, but they are because reality has set in.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: The Kurds have figured out they cannot and do not want to be totally independent because the Turks will take them out.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: The Shia have figured out, generically, the leadership, that they may have 62 percent of the population or thereabouts and control the political apparatus, but they cannot stop their mosques from being blown up.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: They cannot physically control the country. And the Sunnis have figured out that they are not going to run the country again in the near term. So it is a little bit like coming face to face with the reality of one circumstance
BIDEN, JOSEPH: As I said at the outset to my friend, a lot of this relates to people arriving at this conclusion, even in Iraq, by default. The Sunnis would much rather dominate the country again. The Shia would much rather keep the Sunnis out,
BIDEN, JOSEPH: as Maliki in his heart would like to do, but he cannot because he cannot control them.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: The Kurds would love to be independent totally but for the fact that they understand it may be their very demise. So reality is sinking in. The larger point, I say to my friend from Virginia is this: The dilemma I hear,
BIDEN, JOSEPH: and I hear it from my Democratic colleagues, I imagine I will hear it from some of my Republican colleagues, and it is legitimate. They say: BIDEN, we cannot force a political solution any more than we can force a military solution
BIDEN, JOSEPH: Well, I would argue that it is true we have lost our credibility to be able to do what I believe we could have done 5 years ago or 4 years ago. But that is why part of this amendment calls for internationalizing the political solution
BIDEN, JOSEPH: I know my friend from Indiana believes, whether it is the same objective, that there is an overwhelming necessity to engage major powers in the world, to engage regional powers so that, as he says, there are fora; every single day they are sitting down rubbing shoulders trying to figure out an accommodation
BIDEN, JOSEPH: It cannot be done in the abstract. It cannot be done by President Lugar sitting in the White House dealing with Maliki sitting in Baghdad. It cannot be done by bringing in the regional players in Sharm El Sheikh,
BIDEN, JOSEPH: with us convening it and thinking that will get it done. It requires something heavier, deeper, more substantial because one of the things that will get people's attention, that will get the attention of the Sunni leaders and Shia leaders and Kurdish leaders,
BIDEN, JOSEPH: the international
BIDEN, JOSEPH: community led by the major five powers, is if the Security Council says: Hey, look, we are gathering up the team--Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, et cetera, et cetera--and here is what we think your constitution says,
BIDEN, JOSEPH: and this is what we are prepared to support.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: What that does, that not only has implied sticks, it has significant carrots. Significant carrots. That organizational structure can say: We, from the outset, will be the guarantors that none of the regional powers will conclude they must be involved militarily or in a disruptive fashion because the truth is,
BIDEN, JOSEPH: what I try to do is think of myself as, OK, I am a real bad guy, Iranian leader who hates the United States.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: What benefits me the most? What benefits me the most is occupying 10 of our 12 divisions in Iraq posing no threat to them, seeing American blood and treasure spilled. But what I do not want to see is America,
BIDEN, JOSEPH: notwithstanding all of the bravado of Ahmadinejad, that: We will fill the vacuum; we, the Iranians, will fill the vacuum. That is not a vacuum they are looking to fill. If they could fill it, they would. But their ability to fill that vacuum is marginal at best.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: Their influence is degraded when there is continuing sectarian violence. It diminishes in the context of an international settlement.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: So the truth is, it requires the national leadership to agree on a regional solution. A national leadership will be unable, in the lifetime of any one of us on this floor, to agree to a central solution; a unity government from the capital city of Baghdad,
BIDEN, JOSEPH: having military and police authority over the entire country.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: Can anyone imagine the possibility, even the possibility, that you will see a Shia-dominated police force patrolling in Fallujah? As the old joke goes, raise your hand if there is a remote possibility of that.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: Already you cannot send into what is now Kurdistan, three governments, you are not even allowed to fly the Iraqi flag without permission. You cannot send the Iraqi Army there without their permission. You cannot send any national police force there without their permission
BIDEN, JOSEPH: So what makes us think there is anything--let me make an analogy for you. When Washington accepted the surrender documents signed by Cornwallis at the end of our Revolutionary War, I say to my friends from Virginia and Massachusetts,
BIDEN, JOSEPH: what chance do you think there would have been if we had to vote within 6 months on the Constitution that was ratified in Philadelphia?
BIDEN, JOSEPH: Do you think Massachusetts and Virginia would be in the same country? I respectfully suggest, from a historical standpoint, you would not be. So what did we do? We did what I am proposing. You essentially set up Articles of Confederation
BIDEN, JOSEPH: You said: We are going to let Massachusetts and Delaware, the first State, Massachusetts, and Delaware and New Jersey and Virginia, have considerable autonomy. There was no President. There was a Continental Congress,
BIDEN, JOSEPH: a decentralized federal system.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: It took us 13 years to get to our Philadelphia moment. Wherein does the arrogance emanate from that we think by putting 160,000 troops in Iraq, we can, over a 4-year period, in a country that was made by the stroke of a diplomat's pen,
BIDEN, JOSEPH: where France and Britain divided up the spoils of the Ottoman Empire, what makes us think that we can expect them to do something that we were unable to do? So, folks, this is pretty basic stuff. I know everybody knows that.
BIDEN, JOSEPH: I am beginning to sound like I am lecturing. I do not mean to do that. This is pretty simplistic in a sense; it is not rocket science.