The Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki has ordered a halt to the building of a security barrier around the Baghdad neighborhood of Adhamiya. There are obvious political implications to building such a barrier in the Arab world. “I’ve ordered it to stop and to find other means of protection for the neighborhoods,” al-Maliki said, after stating the barrier served to remind the Iraqi people of “other walls that we reject,” a direct reference to the Israeli fence separating it from Gaza and the West Bank.But, as Omar Fadhil notes, “Work to construct similar walls started weeks ago in the Amiriya and Ghazaliyah districts. The ‘news’ went utterly unnoticed then.” Mr. Fadhil notes the barrier has had some effect in Amiriya and Ghazaliyah, and postulates insurgents stirred up the local protests to halt the building of the wall.
The barrier is designed to limit the flow of traffic into and outside the city. The U.S. and Iraqi military wants to monitor the movement of insurgents from the neighborhood while restricting the movement of death squads into the neighborhood. There are some questions as to whether construction will actually stop. An Iraqi military spokesman said construction will continue, while U.S. spokesmen said the “gated communities” plan is now under review.
Hey, I think this is genius. We should dream up a whole Easter Basket’s worth of unpopular, kinda unnecessary security proposals deliberately calculated as easy rejections for Maliki. Hey, it makes him look strong…and that’s what we need right now. A strong, centralized Iraqi national government. Politically and militarily.
Which, by the way, is a pretty accurate summation of this particular fight. Some political, some military. So…..why not let the elected PM stand up to the powerful Americans? And maybe touch on a little populist Arab sentiment in the mean time. I fully support building more walls that the Iraqis can tear down. God damn, if that ain’t the American way, I don’t know what is.
Update: I didn’t know how to categorize this stupid post. We really should have a “kind of kidding?” category for such subjects.
