Democrats Fail To Show A Clear Plan for Iraq
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Should the Democrats win control of the House in the midterm elections, it is far from clear where they will come down on Iraq. Will they push for the immediate departure of America’s 140,000 troops; a partition of the country into three ethnic entities, followed by an American exit; or some other, as yet undefined, plan?
The Republicans have not fared much better on Iraq planning. The Bush administration has yet to declare a new way forward after moving away from its “stay the course” mantra.
Neither here nor there is the forthcoming report from the Iraq Study Group, led by a former secretary of state, James Baker, which could favor negotiations with Syria and Iran.
That is too much fog. It leaves a void where all of America’s Mideast strategies should be, a void that many parties — Iran, Syria, Shiite factions, Sunni insurgents, jihadis, Kurds, and other Arab neighbors — are just waiting in line to fill.
The Democrats’ most visible pseudo-plan is the half-baked “let’s divide Iraq and get out” proposal tabled by Senator Biden, who harbors presidential ambitions. Helping Mr. Biden with his plan are two neoconservative hawks with Democratic leanings: a president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Leslie Gelb, and a former ambassador to Croatia and author of “The End of Iraq,” Peter Galbraith.
Two things unite the three men: a need to make a splash with more social engineering, combined, one fears, with little knowledge of the Middle East and Iraq. Splitting the country, yet again, into Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish mini-states will turn the current bloody chaos into the mother of all civil wars. The war will spread as these new ethnic fiefdoms launch their own social engineering agents into the fractured societies of nearby countries, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, and beyond, to Iran itself.
As for Mr. Baker’s plan, one cannot help but wonder what he is thinking. Talking to Iran and Syria about leaving Iraq is like showing our hand to crocodiles waiting to wade into the bloody Iraqi pond. If anything, Iran and Syria emerged from the 34-day Lebanon war this summer convinced that America’s only reliable ally in the region, Israel, is now isolated and vulnerable, and that Lebanon can once again be destabilized to swing Syria’s way.
They would only be delighted to add Iraq to their menu.
How America leaves Iraq is, therefore, not a matter for shoddy planning.
As it stands now, 60% of Iraq’s population of about 28 million is Shiite and already in control of the decision making. The Sunnis are panicking, seeking support from the equally panicky Saudis, Kuwaitis, Egyptians, and other Sunnis in the region. The Kurds are reinforcing their independence up north, but they could be underestimating Turkey’s fierce rejection of anything resembling a Kurdistan that might appeal to the millions of Turkish Kurds.
The trouble coursing through the Gulf region will shake Bahrain, where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is headquartered amid a mob of angry, pro-Iranian Shiite Arabs ruled by a small minority of corrupt Sunni royal princes.
The United Arab Emirates cannot stand alone as a prosperous, fabulously rich island in the midst of the chaos, either. It, too, stands on fragile legs as a federation of seven emirates in which fully 90% of its population of 5.5 million is expatriates with no sense of loyalty whatsoever to the UAE.
America cannot defend all of these houses of cards once they start tumbling, as they will. Is this what we call a combustible situation? Absolutely.
Frankly, if it were happening in Africa, we wouldn’t care less. But with 60% of the world’s principal energy sources, natural gas and oil, lying beneath the Persian Gulf region and a huge chunk of that in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, we should care how and under what conditions we leave Iraq.
Another major regional consideration is Israel. A “Mad Max” republic in Iraq with empowered jihadists firmly entrenched is the last thing Israel wants.
The old adage long embraced by many neoconservatives of both parties — that fractured Arab and Muslim regimes are ipso facto good for Israel — no longer applies.
Lebanon, the advent of the ayatollahs, the Iran-Iraq wars, the chaos of the Palestinian Arabs, and the turmoil of Lebanon over three decades are proof enough. Let’s not add Iraq to the mix.