Today Senators Joe Biden and Sam Brownback are holding an “unprecedented bipartisan summit” on Iraq, reportedly preparing to promote partition of the country as “a viable way forward to stability and success.”

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Before continuing I need to object to their use of the term “summit.” The expression was coined by Winston Churchill in the 1950s, and refers to a meeting of national leaders — hence the imagery. The two senators are not heads of state, nor are they heads of their parties. They do not even lead in the race to become their respective parties’ presidential nominees — their combined polling numbers still leave them in the low single digits. So it is hard to call this a “summit” meeting without degrading the term to the point where it means just any meeting. For example, they are both on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Is it a summit if they both show up and talk awhile?

That quibble aside, the two candidates should be praised for taking the war in Iraq seriously. Few of the current contenders seem willing to enunciate a position on the war in any detail. Triangulation and deflection are the standard postures for most. On the other hand, that may be smart politics. Why take a position that could easily be overtaken by events? Nixon won in 1968 with no particular public position on Vietnam, or what the press dubbed a “secret plan” to end the war. Coincidentally I too have a secret plan to end the war in Iraq and to guarantee long-term peace and stability in that region, and would be happy to share it with any candidate from any party who would guarantee me a cabinet position and keep the plan secret until after the election. Make that after the inauguration.

Is partition really a viable way forward? Partisans of the idea like to mention that Iraq’s borders are artificial — unlike, say, the 49th parallel. Or that they were the product of war and imperialism — unlike, say, almost every national border on the planet. The implication is that left to other, natural, peaceful forces, the country would divide amoeba-like into self-sustaining, organic pieces. The September 26, 2007, non-binding Senate resolution on Iraq which Biden and Brownback championed called for a weak central government over three mostly autonomous states. Apparently, it was inspired by the successful experiment of our Articles of Confederation period.

One small problem with the plan is that most Iraqis oppose it. All the major Iraqi papers published editorials denouncing the Senate resolution, and Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki sent a protest letter to Biden. A 2006 IRI poll showed that 78 percent of Iraqis opposed partition of the country, 66 percent strongly so. There was regional support in the Kurdish areas, 52-percent approval overall. Yet Kurdish political leaders opposed the language in the Senate resolution because they see the issue as one for the Iraqis to work out. Even dressing up the proposal in beltway-inspired language like the currently fashionable “soft partition” makes it dead on arrival in the region. Any use of the word “partition” vitiates the concept. It is a fighting word. It is about as effective as calling Israeli West Bank settlements “soft Zionism.”

The most objectionable aspect of this or any similar plan is the inescapable imperial hubris. The United States and its Coalition partners have been struggling to support the Iraqi people in their attempt to build a stable, sovereign government. Then U.S. politicians and other philosopher kings come along seeking to impose their pet solutions on the Iraqi polity as though they were its colonial masters. Even discussing Iraqi security in these terms confirms the suspicions of those in the region that see Operation Iraqi Freedom as a western imperialist occupation. An Iranian editorial reflected a commonly held opinion when it declared that the Senate’s resolution “should be viewed within the framework of the mysterious and sinister designs harbored by the colonialist powers.” Thus, the resolution was not only impotent, it was injurious.

The appeal to partition as a solution misses the fact that we would only be trading one set of problems for another. Who would draw the borders? Would we assist in ethnic relocation in those tough to define multiethnic areas? (Please do not refer to it as ethnic cleansing — even though the rest of the world would.) How would energy revenue be distributed? Would the Coalition intervene in the inevitable internal clashes that followed, as occurred in divisions in the Balkans, or between India and Pakistan? Would we guarantee the external borders against interventions by Turkey, Iran, or others? And overall, could someone explain how a divided, weakened Iraq would be a greater force for stability in that volatile region?

The Iraqis are the best judges of how to work out the federal relationship within their system. Their constitution is flexible enough to allow for the formation of semi-autonomous regions without the U.S. Senate’s advice and consent. The Iraqis are in the process of working out the details of these relationships. It isn’t a smooth process, but what did we expect? Many see factionalization and lack of cooperation as defects in the Iraqi system instead of pure expressions of their tribal political culture. Anyway, it took the United States 89 years and the greatest armed conflict of the 19 century to sort out our definition of federalism — and even then it was incomplete.

I think the Iraqi parliament should respond to the Biden/Brownback summit by passing a resolution calling for the partition of the United States. Let the doughty mountain folk of Vermont finally regain their freedom.

— James S. Robbins is the director of the Intelligence Center at Trinity Washington University , senior fellow for national-security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council, and author of Last in Their Class: Custer, Picket and the Goats of West Point. Robbins is also an NRO contributor.