Good Move, Fellas

Somehow the Democrats managed to do damage with a nonbinding resolution.

Iraq's prime minister told The Associated Press on Friday that a U.S. Senate proposal to split the country into regions according to religious or ethnic divisions would be a "catastrophe." [...]

The nonbinding Senate resolution calls for Iraq to be divided into federal regions under control of the three communities in a power-sharing agreement similar to the one that ended the 1990s war in Bosnia. Democrat presidential hopeful Sen. Joseph Biden was a prime sponsor of the measure.

"It is an Iraqi affair dealing with Iraqis," Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told AP on a return flight to Baghdad from New York where he appeared at the U.N. General Assembly. "Iraqis are eager for Iraq's unity. ... Dividing Iraq is a problem, and a decision like that would be a catastrophe."

Nothing has done more to perpetuate the notion that Iraq is an occupied country than Joe Biden's cockamamie resolution. Chief among the concerns is that nobody in Iraq WANTS a partitioned country, not even the Sunnis (who see an outsized role for themselves in a national government; they essentially want to return to the Saddam era). And having a Western nation vote to divide up a nation in the Middle East calls up all sorts of memories of the British partition circa WWI. Here's Marc Lynch:

As meaningless, non-binding symbolic Senate resolutions go, Joe Biden just managed a doozy. By passing with 75 votes a meaningless, non-binding symbolic Senate resolution in favor of the partition of Iraq, Biden managed to simultaneously: infuriate nearly all Iraqis, who have virtually unanimously condemned the resolution (as have the Arab allies of the US, for that matter); let Senate Republicans off the hook by allowing them to say that they voted for change even though they continue to vote against anything real; and endorse an unworkable plan which would massively increase human suffering while working against American interests in the region and not actually solving the problems.

I know the Democrats feel like they're out of options when it comes to Iraq, but "making it worse" doesn't seem like the best one.