Some mad bugger's wall

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So here's the latest idiotic plan to pacify Baghdad:

American military commanders in Baghdad are trying a radical new strategy to quell the widening sectarian violence by building a 12-foot-high, three-mile-long wall separating a historic Sunni enclave from Shiite neighborhoods.

Soldiers in the Adhamiya district of northern Baghdad, a Sunni Arab stronghold, began construction of the wall last week and expect to finish it within a month. Iraqi Army soldiers would then control movement through a few checkpoints. The wall has already drawn intense criticism from residents of the neighborhood, who say that it will increase sectarian tensions and that it is part of a plan by the Shiite-led Iraqi government to box in the minority Sunnis.

So. A wall. Brilliant. Like that won't backfire and make everything worse than it already is. There's nothing people like more than to be walled in, or walled apart, or made to feel like they're not free to go about as they wish. So much for liberation. So much for the new Baghdad. No wonder so many Iraqis are so eager for the U.S. to leave, come what may.

Sectarianism? You ain't seen nothin' yet.

Tear down the wall! Tear down the wall!

For more, see Libby (who also chose to go with a Pink Floyd post title).