Senator Biden has interesting plan for Iraq

Incoming Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden (D-Delaware) has voiced an idea that some of us have been supporting all along: Partition Iraq into three countries.

The American trend toward promoting centralization of other countries isn't always what's best - especially when we (used to) preach federalism at home. Why not let Iraq partition itself into its three natural nations, either as a confederation or as three separate countries?

There are lots of reasons to be against it, as the administration has maintained. But there are good reasons for it, as well. Especially when the Iraqis won't step up to the plate and take the national sovereignty we have been trying to extend them.

Many advocates of a unitary Iraq say that allowing Kurdistan to become independent would cause problems for Turkey, a staunch NATO ally. True enough. But Turkey lost its chance to influence the Iraq outcome by denying us its territory as a northern front in 2003, so we should not be so concerned about Ankara's self-interests when our own are at stake.