Wampum

Senator Clinton is proposing that US forces garrison Iraqi Kurdistan. The rationale being a mix of "northern mission", continued combat operations targeting the active unites of the former Iraqi army and intelligence organizations, which target US and Iraqi collaborator forces, and the usual Iranian influence narrative.

Juan Cole makes the obvious points -- the Kurds are adequately self-protected, continued combat ops with half the forces isn't going to work better than continued combat ops with all the forces, and there are no Iranians, at least in the sense of intel or military operational units, discernible either forensically (in the combat dead) or in the 11,000 current capture live inventory.

Cole concludes that Senator Clinton is poorly advised.

I'm slightly more concerned. There was a "northern mission" during President Clinton's two terms in office, so perhaps it was the use of a familiar phrase, but in the present, a foreign military occupation of a semi-autonomous region is likely to turn into a war against Iraqi Kurdistan self-determination, whether as a semi-autonomous region of a still functioning Iraqi state, or as the independent state in continuous conflict with Arab Iraq, and fresh conflict with Turkey and Iran.

Its really just the partition Senator Biden has hung his hat on -- Kurdish north, Sunni west, and Shia south, with the force level details filled in, and the probable consequence of no reduction in the necessity for military operations by competing political factions written off as unavoidable, rather than as a good reason to avoid Senator Biden's happier, less detailed work of domestic US political fantesy. The only variation of significance is the choice of "north" from the set of "notrh, "west", or "south" choices for the face saving redeployment.

In domestic politics, which is the only politics there is, Senator Clinton's re-work of Senator Biden's message may be effective, but that's only as long as Dems (and cross-over likely independents in California's modified open primary), who are the only voters there are in the primaries, go along with the notion that US troops will be greeted with flowers in Iraqi Kurdistan indefinitely -- as if it was already NATO territory ... like some misplaced part of Turkish Kurdistan.

Winning an election at the cost of starting new military operations targeting any, and possibly all of two national, and two sub-national forces isn't a compelling vision for putting an end to the Iraq War, but it might work. George Bush managed to sell war-as-peace, and it may still work as message with the 'fraidest generation.

One thing that is clear is that either Senator Clinton hasn't found her core goals on the Iraq problem, or if she has, they're not worth thinking about twice.