Biden's Iraq Plan Is Getting Noticed

In a post published at AlterNet, David Corn compares George Bush's inability to articulate a strategy for Iraq with Joe Biden's recent policy prescription:

Let's compare Bush with Sen. Joseph Biden, the Delaware Democrat. A few days after Bush's press conference, Biden published an op-ed article in The Washington Post that reiterated a plan for Iraq that he had previously developed with Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. I am not endorsing the plan, but here's what was refreshing about it: It was a plan. It had five points. It was internally consistent. It was an effort to deal with the dilemmas at hand. The Biden-Gelb plan calls for a unified but decentralized Iraq with Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis essentially controlling their own regions. A central government would be in charge of the really important national responsibilities: protecting the country and divvying up the oil revenue. (The Sunnis, who generally live in areas not loaded with oil, would be guaranteed a share of the pot.) The plan has a reconstruction component, which includes a massive jobs program, and calls for withdrawing most U.S. troops by the end of 2007.
It may or may not be the right plan, but it's a plan. After reading the op-ed, I could not help but wonder, why can't Bush describe a plan of his own in such concrete terms?

Right now, Biden is not considered a top-tier presidential candidate, but I can't help but wonder whether he might manage to break out of the middle of the pack by daring to tackle the Iraq mess head on. Whether his Iraq plan hurts or helps his candidacy is an open question. But Joe Biden has performed a public service by putting forward a set of concrete proposals for fixing the mess in Iraq.