...any peaceful measure that enhances security should be welcomed.

Problem is, Iraqis don't see it as a peaceful measure. Here's Riverbend:

The Wall is the latest effort to further break Iraqi society apart. Promoting and supporting civil war isn't enough, apparently.

Iraqis have generally proven to be more tenacious and tolerant than their mullahs, ayatollahs, and Vichy leaders. It's time for America to physically divide and conquer - like Berlin before the wall came down or Palestine today.

The wall isn't a peaceful measure, but a violent one. A violent stance against innocent people whose lives we've ruined.

Every decision that's been made about Iraq, from "Saddam has WMD" to Shock and Awe to leaving weapons stockpiles unguarded to Mission Accomplished! to debathification to Abu Ghraib to Bush and Lieberman and McCain's insistence that that We're Winning! to the Surge...all the way up to this wall -- ALL of this has been done without any consideration of the Iraqi people.

That's a huge reason why this war is lost.

Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code. -- SCOTUS that was...

Are these the same Iraqis who put explosive devices into a girls school? The Iraqis, or rather various elements of Iraq with help from Al Qaeda seem bent on genocide and ethnic cleansing. Therefore, their protestations to the contrary why believe them? The walls, like the U.S. military prevent the group that thinks it has the upperhand from slaughtering the groups they don't like.

The U.S. might not be able to prevent the revenge culture from overwhelming Iraq but it reduce the consequence. Look at the wall Israel is building. The American Left and the Palestinians whine about it but it has greatly reduced terror attacks.

Violence and chaos not unity is Iraq's biggest issue. If Rumsfeld has sent enough troops in the first place maybe the walls would not now be needed but stopping ethic killing should take priority.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

J. McCutchen

The Professor should have researched the subject before holding forth.

To; The Ivory Tower
From: Patrick Cockburn in the Red Zone
"Be careful," warned a senior Iraqi government official living in the Green Zone in Baghdad, "be very careful and above all do not trust the police or the army."
He added that the level of insecurity in the Iraqi capital is as bad now as it was before the US drive to make the city safe came into operation in February.The so-called "surge", the dispatch of 20,000 extra American troops to Iraq with the prime mission of getting control of Baghdad, is visibly failing...The problem about the US security plan is that it does not provide security. It had some impact to begin with and the number of bodies found in the street went down. This was mainly because the Shia Mehdi Army was stood down by its leader, Muqtada al-Sadr....A bizarre flavour has been given to Saadoun Street because the government has encouraged artists to paint the giant concrete blast barriers with uplifting, if unlikely, scenes of mountain torrents, meadows in spring and lakeside scenes. Many of the pictures, all in garish greens, blues and yellows, look more like Switzerland than Iraq. Muqtada al-Sadr, for his part, is encouraging artists to paint the blast barriers with scenes illustrating the anguish that has been inflicted on the Iraqi people by the US occupation.
The only "gated community" that functions successfully in Baghdad is the Green Zone itself, the four square miles on the right bank of the Tigris that is home to the government and the US embassy. It is sealed off from the rest of Iraq by multiple security barriers and fortifications. Entering the zone recently I was questioned and searched, at different stages, by Kurds, Georgians, Peruvians and Nepalese.
No country in the world has such rigorous frontier procedures as what one American called "this little chunk of Texas". Living cut off in the zone it is impossible for the ruling elite of Iraq to understand the terrible suffering and terror beyond the compound's gates.

A little chunk o Tejas doc...
Then there's this

Wall Infuriates Baghdadis - Adhamiya Residents Living in Fear

I generally find, Professor, that is almost always a good idea, before I speak, to know what I am talking about

Are these the same Iraqis who put explosive devices into a girls school?

Is that for me? Why, because I was so obviously speaking about and defending the same Iraqis who put explosive devices in a girls' school?

If Rumsfeld has sent enough troops in the first place maybe the walls would not now be needed but stopping ethic killing should take priority.

The old "Invading Iraq Was A Great Idea But We Just Did It The Wrong Way" theory of foreign policy.

The violence will never stop until we leave. No amount of surging is going to change that. Whatever happens after we leave is going to happen after we leave. Whether it's next year or in 10 years.

It's their country. They can wait us out.

Look at the wall Israel is building. The American Left and the Palestinians whine about it but it has greatly reduced terror attacks.

So whatever works in Israel automatically works in Iraq?

What's that saying about hammers and everything looking like a nail?

Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code. -- SCOTUS that was...

Walls matter. It matters whether you feel to be the builder or imposed on; on the inside or the outide, included or excliuded; protected or imprisoned.

The Israeli wall fails on all counts for the Palestinians, not to say that it is seen as a land grab also.

In Iraq, apparently Maliki signed off on the US decision, but there was no parliamentary debate or decision making. The Sunnis were not consulted. The wall is being imposed. And Sunnis feel excluded, imprisoned and threatened.

So, not only do we get to see who still pulls the strings of the puppets, but we continue to see an insensitivity that does absolujtely nothing to foster any democratic process.

Sad to say, Iraq is a security and governmental shambles, and the US has no idea what it is doing, or how to work towards the best possible of bad options.

BBochove,

That the inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto were "protected" from anything is a stretch, but I do see your point.

cscs, agreed. We should start an orderly pullout today.

As to the bombs in the girl's schools and the recent news of another high placed al Qaeda official being killed...I believe very little that comes from our Government here or in Iraq concerning Iraq.

This post has some plausibility problems right on the face of it. First, maybe you want to divide up a region, keeping some people in and some out. Now, the precedents in Berlin and Israel have had moral connotations that already do not recommend themselves, and that's already appalling, I think, in a country we're alleged to liberate, but still it's a goal one could argue is commensurate with the means. But imagine applying that to a country torn by political factions. The meandering nature of Israel's wall starts to seem pythagorean by its simplicity. Think of a map of America with those who voted for Bush walled off of those who voted for Kerry. Has Etzioni seriously looked at the region and its civil war?

Second, it's contrary to all our hopes and goals, from both parties for Iraq. Those who wish American withdrawal assume Iraqis must then deal with it themselves, but also those who sought to justify America's presence assume a political solution. What then does this solution prescribe, other than perpetual war?

Third, it seems a prescription for not just a surge, but an eternal occupation, akin to the Soviet Union's in East Berlin. Is that Etzioni's serious prescription?

Finally, the post has scant evidence to back up its claim that this is a solution, and didn't I read just in the last couple of weeks of a scary and chastening attack within the American occupied zone? Sorry, but Etzioni's posts increasingly strike me as less the work of a scholar than of another thoughtless pundit who could be replaced by 80 percent of the commenters here. And I say that not in the least believing the comments in reply that once we leave the war will die down. This is just an excuse for occupation. 

John

http://www.haberarts.com/

Well actually since Israel built the security fence, terrorism has been reduced considerably.

Ah, Mr. Etzioni. I'd love to know when are you going to be on Democracy Now. That would be a good discussion.

But does this relate to the wall or security fence, or does this relate to other factors.

There's no reason to assume that terrorism is a constant or steady state process. The better approach is to assume it ebbs and flows, surges and recedes, that it is a phenomenon responsive to a variety of events, social, political, etc.

In that sense, I'm not prepared to assume that the wall has the same 'one to one' relationship to 'terrorism' as you assume clearly exists, or if it does exist, will necessarily continue to exist.

I grant you, it seems obvious if they can't get through the wall, then its harder to accomplish something. But people who are prepared to engage in suicide bombing are highly motivated.

The other point would be that Israel's security wall hasn't stopped violence at all, but merely redistributed it. Consider Israel's recent war on Gaza, aerial attacks, ground assaults, knocking out the electrical grid... If anything the amount of deaths has certainly gone up, the volume of suffering has certainly increased.

Ah, but let's not quibble. Why don't you go off to Iraq and explain to the Baghdad residents that the wall is a great idea because its worked so well for Israel.

Just another excuse for Israeli apartheid.

By the time a situation calls for a wall it's too late. It's an indicator of failing social health. Who will praise gated communties here, except the inhabitants? How healthy was a wall for Germany?

A partition is in process and it will run its course.

Kagan, speaking for the Bush policy establishment, assures us again in the Sunday Times of the success in our building a democracy by brute force. This seems to mean not resettlement but a warm, cuddly sharing of power in an ethnically integrated society, as when he takes pride in, he claims, success in barring Shiites from taking ownership of property of displaced Sunnis.  

Seems to me that the militarists will have to agree either on that, which renders pleas for walls "inoperative," or a much more drastically accelerated sectioning of Iraq, which renders walls complex and way too premature at present. Etzioni's version of keeps the stupidity of occupation without fanaticism to give it a loony coherence. Oh, well, now at least we know what promises to build infrastructure mean. 

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

Physical walls do nothing to cure the ideological divide of a civil war.

What works best is opportunity, for a future, for work, for family, rising above the stagnation of a life.

Dickens's wrote the two things we have to guard against are "Ignorance and Want"

Build bridges not walls, figuratively and literally.

It's best the US get the hell of Iraq, let the Arab countries clean up our mess.

There is blood on our hands and the US should never forget this war of choice. This will be the legacy of the Bush doctrine.