A week ago Biden was campaigning in Franklin, NH when a young brunette wearing sunglasses, stopped him in front of the IOOF hall, and point-blank asked him what he stood for.

His answer was of course to stop the war in Iraq.

She asked him, “how are you going to stop it, and what makes you better than any of the other candidates who are also running and say they want to stop it.”

Biden, after acknowledging that she had asked a good question, responded that he seemed to be the only candidate proposing to split the groups into a loose federation, where each ethnic group would basically control their own fiefdom. The other candidates all supported treating Iraq as an one entity composed of all three groups, Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds.

“History has shown,” leaning close to her, making it hard to eavesdrop, “that anytime there is sectarian violence, the first thing you have to do, is to separate the parties. It is what we did in Bosnia, when the Yugoslavian country disintegrated; we created different areas of control.

“If each one of these groups in Iraq is no longer being forced to work out that country’s problems together, then infighting among each other takes a back seat to improving their lives.”

He continued, “Each group, needs to prove they can, at first be responsible for their own people.”

You can tell from Joe’s wisdom, that he has raised kids. Anyone like him who has been challenged by young ones, knows that the first thing one does whenever a tussle occurs, is to separate the parties. Only then you can talk to them. If anyone reading this still remembers the tense confrontations of teenage adolescence, one can remember when you are protecting yourself from being beaten, with either a good offense, or a good defense, you tend to hear very little of what is being said at you from the sidelines.

Apparently Condi doesn’t get this. Her leadership in this area seems to be on par with the ineffective high school teacher in the Cheech & Chong comedy skit……”Class,……. Class…….” However, Condi should not feel too alone, for apparently (unless they have changed) her views are right on par with those of Hillary, Obama, or Edwards.

Their policy is to use force to hold the union together, following guidelines similar to those used by the Soviet Union when they took over the “Stans” throughout middle Asia……This may seem appropriate when one looks at the surface of the issue.

But the problem that does not seem to be thought out behind her argument,( perhaps because she does not have kids), is that when one chooses to use force to precipitate a certain event upon ones enemy, they must concurrently make plans to deal with the counterattack that will no doubt occur after that enemy regroups. Not many Democrats would think it wise to walk up to an IED and smack it with a stick. More sensible, they would argue, would be to diffuse it.

But if Iraq could be interpreted as being the IED, and the US was in charge of dealing with it, then the policy that prevailed since Rice has been in charge of policy, has metaphorically been to beat it with a stick.

History has foretold us the outcome. It blows up in our faces.

A better approach, as any bomb expert would tell you, would be to methodically sort through the complex wirings, and cut through either the green or blue wire……. and disarm the thing.

And of all the candidates, Biden is the only one who has done so.

For if one has ever had a sworn enemy who is intent on doing you harm, the expectation that you are to sit down and discuss cooperation in a gentlemanly fashion, is not realistic.

But once you become separated from your enemy, in a secure environment, and you no longer have to give his actions priority over the problems of daily life, then quite possibly somewhere down the road, you may realize that peaceful cooperation would better serve your interests, than constant bickering. In the words of the ninety’s group Outcast, who says it best: ” you got to keep ’em, separated…….”

Or put in a different way, if you were personally given the choice, would you rather pick a fight with your neighbor and retaliate against all of his retaliations against you………….., or repair and fix your house and focus on increasing your own well being and not pay him the time of day?

The rational choice is to increase your own well being. The fastest way to do this is to separate the warring parties, and give them control over their own lives. Let the Shiites govern Shiites, Sunnis govern Sunnis, and the Kurds govern Kurds.

This is nothing more than common sense.

Why no one is pursuing it besides Biden, is beyond me………