SEN. BROWNBACK GETS IT

Via James Oliphant at The Swamp, I learn that the Biden amendment to express the sense of the Congress that Iraq should be partitioned among the 3 major groups passed today, 75-23. Speaking in favor of the amendment, Sen. Brownback (R-KA) said in part:

I show my colleagues a map that I think is kind of interesting. It is a map of Iraq under the Ottoman Empire. It is prior to the World War I divisions in Iraq. I think we ought to study history to keep from repeating past mistakes. I think we are repeating history now because we have not studied it sufficiently. So here is a map from 1914. This is fascinating. You have the north Ottoman, which were called vilayets. This is in the State of Mosul, the Kurdish north. You had the vilayet of Baghdad, the Sunni area in Iraq. You had the vilayet of Basra, the Shia State. Baghdad was the federal city--a very effective city at that particular time.

My reason for saying this is, if you can put it in a certain term, this is natural in Iraq. Instead of us trying to force together a country under Shia domination--and under the current setup all you are ever going to get is a Shia government, but it is going to be a weak one because the Kurds are not going to agree with a strong Shia government, nor are the Sunnis. All you can ever get is a weak Shia government that has a lot of question marks in it from the Sunnis. They don't trust the Shia, and the Shia don't trust the Sunnis. The Sunnis think they ought to run the whole country, as they have for the past century. They think the Sunnis are going to come back.

I submit to this body that we have a flawed political design that we are pushing currently in Baghdad. That is why we have not seen the political progress that we need to see taking place. We have done the military surge, which has been successful. Now we need a political surge. We need to send in a Jim Baker or a Condoleezza Rice to get these people in a room to cut the deal to get different states, where you have the power mostly residing in the states.

What I am saying is rather than having a whole bunch of people get killed from this point forward, why don't we recognize the demographic realities on the ground and put this in a series of states where the ethnic group is running it and stop the killing or certainly reduce it substantially. That is what this amendment calls for.

Here are some excerpts from the amendment:

SEC. 1535. SENSE OF CONGRESS ON FEDERALISM IN IRAQ.

(a) Findings.--Congress makes the following findings:
(1) Iraq continues to experience a self-sustaining cycle of sectarian violence.

(b) Sense of Congress.--It is the sense of Congress that--
(1) the United States should actively support a political settlement among Iraq's major factions based upon the provisions of the Constitution of Iraq that create a federal system of government and allow for the creation of federal regions;