Carving up Iraq: An Arab Viewpoint

Strange isn't it that only an Arab news organ can see the division as part of a divide and rule policy and in line with the PNAC. Probably many Americans still haven't a clue what the PNAC is. This is from the Arabnews.. Note that the plan itself is an idea put forth by a leading Democrat Senator Biden.


Editorial: Carving Up Iraq
29 September 2007

The US Senate motion Thursday that Iraq be divided into three “federal” units for Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds gives practical shape to the principle of divide and rule, enshrined in the neocon “Project for the New American Century” that has underpinned everything that the Bush White House has done since the 9/11 attacks gave it the excuse to attack first Afghanistan and then Iraq.

The architect of the Project, Richard N. Perle — nicknamed by Washington insiders “The Prince of Darkness” — was closely associated with the administration hawks, not least former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. A past adviser to both the Pentagon and Israeli’s right-wing Likud Party, Perle believes that US military power has to be extended worldwide, to control key resources, including oil. That Perle has since become a public critic of the Iraq invasion has nothing to do with any change of heart. Rather he blames the incompetence of the administration in the key post-invasion period, where lack of proper planning and grossly optimistic assumptions about the reactions of Iraqis to Saddam’s ouster led to chaos. Yet this may itself be a subterfuge. It is precisely because the invasion plunged Iraq into anarchy that the idea of dividing the country up has now gained leverage.

And leave it to the Democrats in the Senate to indulge the idea that America has any right to divvy up Iraq in the first place. This crass violation of the sovereignty of a country was put forward by leading Democrat Joe Biden, whose party is busy trying to figure out how to distance itself from a war that has become unpopular with American voters while at the same time maintaining a hawkish stance toward the global war on terror. Good luck.

Domestically, carving up Iraq like a holiday turkey is indeed an attractive solution to America’s quagmire problem. US electors might back an extended US military commitment in the country if they were assured that partition could bring peace and US forces would come home with their heads held high, this time chanting “Mission Accomplished” and meaning it.

From an Iraqi point of view, division is anathema. Leaving aside the outrageous proposition that the future of Iraq should be decided in the US Congress and not by Iraqis, partition would tear apart the many mixed communities that still live together in harmony and take pride first and foremost in being Iraqis, not Shiites, Sunnis or Kurds. A partitioned Iraq would draw front lines along which hothead radicals from each community, often manipulated by cynical politicians, could confront each other sure that their rears was secure. Divided, no Iraqi community could resist outside interference. And no doubt Washington would underwrite the autonomy of each “statelet”, giving it the right to interfere as and whenever it wished just as it has done with the Palestinian elections.

Is it any wonder the Arab world finds an arrogant Senate vote on the destiny of Iraq unacceptable and utterly contemptible?