As the New York Times headline helped the Obama campaign point out, Obama’s Pick Adds Foreign Expertise to Ticket: “In Mr. Biden, Mr. Obama selected a six-term senator from Delaware best known for his expertise on foreign affairs.”

The most recent example of that expertise is Biden’s 2006 proposal for dividing Iraq into three cantons and withdrawing American forces:

The idea, as in Bosnia, is to maintain a united Iraq by decentralizing it, giving each ethno-religious group — Kurd, Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab — room to run its own affairs, while leaving the central government in charge of common interests. We could drive this in place with irresistible sweeteners for the Sunnis to join in, a plan designed by the military for withdrawing and redeploying American forces, and a regional nonaggression pact.

It is a matter of profound good fortune for both America and Iraq that Biden’s plan was never given serious consideration.

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