An Alternate Witness

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9783129

I can't believe it. The Americans and their Iraqi lackeys are building a wall around the Shi'a community of Adamiya in northern Baghdad. Despite spokesman for the US military command in Iraq, Major Gen. William Caldwell's comment that it is not usually America policy to build walls, I am reminded of the wall under construction between the United States and Mexico. Not only that, but who do you think is really paying for the so-called "Security Barrier" (i.e. Big Concrete Wall) that Israel has almost finished building around the West Bank? At the very least, the United States' government is perfectly transparent about its support for the Anti-Palestinian Wall. That's surely the wall Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was referring to when he said he was "afraid that the wall may remind us of other walls we reject."

But let's be realistic here. Do walls really work? No wall is going to keep destitute Mexicans out of the underbelly of the United States' economy, nor keep outraged, desperate Palestinians from attacking their Israeli opressors. How successful was the Berlin Wall at keeping capitalism out of the Soviet Bloc?

I can only think of only one wall that was truly effective at confining a targetted population: the wall around the Warsaw ghetto. Do we really want to follow Hitler and Himmler's example, though?

There must be a better way. What ever happened to negotiation, democratic processes inclusionary of militant Iraqi nationalists, humanitarian aid, and "winning hearts and minds"?