Make Walls, Not War

IN a surge of realism, the Senate has voted 75-23 to acknowledge that Iraq has broken up and cannot be put back together. The measure, co-sponsored by Joe Biden, a Democratic presidential candidate, and Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, supports a plan for Iraq to become a loose confederation of three regions — a Kurdish area in the north, a Shiite region in the south and a Sunni enclave in the center — with the national government in Baghdad having few powers other than to manage the equitable distribution of oil revenues.

While the nonbinding measure provoked strong reactions in Iraq and from the Bush administration, it actually called for exactly what Iraq’s Constitution already provides — and what is irrevocably becoming the reality on the ground. Read more of Peter W. Galbraith @ NYT