Did You Know about This???

We're building a wall in Baghdad to separate ethnic areas. Can you imagine that happening ANYWHERE in the U.S.???

I don't check the links on my site very often - much as I find each one of them interesting - but I happened to click on Baghdad Burning today and was shocked to find a new entry, just posted today, about the building of a wall in Baghdad. She likens it to Berlin and the ghettos of the holocaust:

The Great Wall of Segregation...

…Which is the wall the current Iraqi government is building (with the support and guidance of the Americans). It's a wall that is intended to separate and isolate what is now considered the largest 'Sunni' area in Baghdad- let no one say the Americans are not building anything. According to plans the Iraqi puppets and Americans cooked up, it will 'protect' A'adhamiya, a residential/mercantile area that the current Iraqi government and their death squads couldn't empty of Sunnis.

The wall, of course, will protect no one. I sometimes wonder if this is how the concentration camps began in Europe. The Nazi government probably said, "Oh look- we're just going to protect the Jews with this little wall here- it will be difficult for people to get into their special area to hurt them!" And yet, it will also be difficult to get out.

I was also shocked to read that they're leaving. Her family has finally decided to give up, pack up, and get out. This one little voice of reason in the midst of the war is going to leave the country, and who knows if/when she'll write again? That thought makes me really sad.

It's also sad that she points out how much we've screwed up her country:

I remember Baghdad before the war- one could live anywhere. We didn't know what our neighbors were- we didn't care. No one asked about religion or sect. No one bothered with what was considered a trivial topic: are you Sunni or Shia? You only asked something like that if you were uncouth and backward. Our lives revolve around it now. Our existence depends on hiding it or highlighting it- depending on the group of masked men who stop you or raid your home in the middle of the night.

The nasty juxtaposition of this with my prior entry is not lost on me. Prayers of thanksgiving for the luck of landing on this side of the planet are not enough!