My opinion of those Baghdad walls is changing with this new input: Iraq PM Al Maliki wants the wall building stopped. Therefor the walls must be a good thing. Why? Because Al Maliki wants us to stay in Iraq and keep fighting forever so he can stay prime minister. Every time we make some progress he wants to reverse it because if our troops leave Iraq he will immediately be removed as PM.

This is a big part of why it was one more error, in a stream of errors, to rush to create a “democratic” government in Iraq as a political play for us at home. The government is a dysfunctional mess, with everyone wrapped up in their own unassociated and competing agendas.

The walls have been built around some communities already and construction is continuing around a total of 10 “or more” so far. No limit on more has been announced and I have a feeling that Al Malikis demands that the construction be stopped won’t be obeyed this time around. The walls, so far, are working. (News this morning: the walls will go up in spite of Al Maliki.)

That’s something I didn’t expect or allow credit for happening, simply because of the desire of the muslim combatants to get in and kill each others people. It’s still too soon to tell how well the walls will work, but so far they’ve resulted in a significant reduction of violence in the areas where they’ve been emplaced.

One of the drawbacks to creating these “gated communities” is that they require a constant military presence and the screening of all who enter and leave. I highly doubt that the Iraqi police or military will do a proper job of it if we hand it over, as they have a history of engaging in the same acts of genocide as the various insurgents. In fact it’s often difficult to tell them apart.

The military sees a simple virtue in the barriers: “If we keep the bad guys out, then we win.” In the short term, yes. But in the long term? The Mid-East has a long way to go yet before it reaches the degree of stability that the West now has, and a long-term U.S. military commitment to Iraq is appearing less and less likely. However, the walls seem to be working, for now.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 23rd, 2007 at 5:33 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.