When In Doubt, Build A Wall
I wasn’t surprised to learn about the Bush Administration’s now-uncertain plans to build a wall between Sunnis and Shiites in Baghdad. After all, walls seem to be one of his favorite, all-purpose solutions. From the increased security around the presidential palace in Washington to the anti-immigrant electrified fortress at the border with Mexico, this president has proven himself a builder and a divider.He builds walls around information, too. Consider the secret detention centers and extraordinary renditions, the PATRIOT Act and secret tribunals, the stonewalling anytime Cheney or Rove are asked to account for their actions, the attempts to re-classify mounds of government documents and keep everything they do secret.
When President Bush spots a problem, he cordons it off. I imagine his task force to research what can be done in the case of troubled individuals like Cho Sueng-Hui will lead to much the same conclusion. Like Iraq, we couldn’t actually have done anything to prevent the violence. We can only preempt it. With a wall. Maybe we’ll call it an institution.
Now I could be wrong, but I thought society was moving in the direction of tearing down walls, not building them. Divisions between cultures. Inequalities between races. Lines between nations. Everywhere from the internet to the European Union to bisexuality on college campuses, it seems to me that walls are tumbling down.
Perhaps Bush’s desperate grabs for political bricks and mortar are signs of regressive nostalgia. Ah, the good old days of the Berlin wall. When the enemy was clear and the defense budget rationales were clearer. Today Bush is having trouble getting his war supplemental through Congress. Ronnie didn’t have these problems.
When the Great Wall of China was finally finished in the 16th Century - the construction of which claimed over 3,000 lives - it did little to prevent the Ming Dynasty from keeping out the Manchus, who nonetheless overthrew the government. Nor was the Berlin Wall particularly useful. In addition to being the physical embodiment of Cold War anxieties and tensions, it fractured a people who were once united, leaving such deep rifts that, in 2004, 25% of West Germans and 12% of East Germans still wished the wall existed. Have we ever found that walling off our problems is a good solution?
What about instead … oh, I don’t know … maybe solving our problems in the first place. Not locking up the mentally ill but providing counseling and community bonds. Not isolating and threatening Iran but diplomacy and mutual aid. Not raiding and deporting immigrants but creating an economy that works for everyone. Not creating us-versus-them hierarchies of rights and privileges but pursuing justice and fairness for everyone thus chipping away at the borders and walls in our hearts, our minds and our politics.
Those who are younger than I am and don’t remember the fall of the Berlin Wall might find these sentiments hopelessly romantic. But the day the wall fell, the sun started to rise on a new era of connectivity and community, upending the dank mold of fear and resentment the wall had sheltered. Walls everywhere that once seemed fixed became fictions. The possibility of connectivity across divides, across the whole world, was opened up. We see that connectivity blossoming today, watching movies from Bangladesh on YouTube and adopting new environmental innovations from Singapore.
Good fences have never made good policy, just as they’ve never made good neighbors. Bush’s embrace of wall building and secrecy reminds me of totalitarian feudal lords. But feudalism failed too, didn’t it? Now that Nouri al-Maliki has poked a hole in Bush’s Baghdad wall plans, can we start building some bridges instead?
Sally Kohn is director of the New York-based Movement Vision Project, working with grassroots organizations across the United States to advance our shared values of family, community and humanity. She has interviewed progressive leaders across the country on their vision for the future.
helen took the words right out of my mouth.
Another point not to be overlooked:
Halliburton is always willing to jump in and be awarded more wall building contracts, wherever the regime wants walls; Mexican border, U.S. Embassy in Bagdad, domestic and offshore gulags, etc.
good article. failed to mention, however, that one of the reasons the Baghdad wall so irritates the Iraqis is that it reflects the wall that Israel has been building through Palestinian land, further reinforcing the impression that the occupation is a joint Israel-American venture.
“When the Great Wall of China was finally finished in the 16th Century - the construction of which claimed over 3,000 lives ”
3,000? I think we are missing some zeroes here, like three of them — it should be more like three million
I find it rather amazing that someone can write about walls around the world and never mention the most important one of all; the Israeli Apartheid Wall. What is that all about?
In landscaping, Bushes are often used as dividers, barriers, and separators. Bush’s own name is a metaphor for his own existence.
while we’re at it let’s burn all the flags too.
p.s. tbone712, as a landscaper and in memoriam to Molly Ivans, don’t you mean shrub
Yep Helen gets it right here, the Repigs rule by fear and division, and the Dems do next to nothing to oppose this damage, sigh.
Uh, gee, Ms. Kohn, you seem to have left out one fairly obvious wall. Guess that one doesn’t count, does it? Visit Israel often, do you?
To those who rightly noted that I didn’t include Israel’s walling off of Palestine on the list, excellent point. To be honest, the only reason I didn’t include that very obvious example is that Bush has actually been critical (if only mildly so) of that wall, so frankly I thought it would diffuse the overall argument a bit (since Bush isn’t directly advocating for a wall in the occupied territories as a solution). Then again, just because I can rationalize the omission doesn’t mean it’s right choice…
Thank you for an intelligent and honest answer, Ms Kohn.
How about tearing down the wall between us and our government?
You guys in congress think socialized medicine is no good for us but good for you.
How about a living wage? If you can’t live on 100,000 a year what about the rest of us?
You scumsucking congressmen apparently think we want our “representatives” to party hardy.
I think we would be better off without you, no, I KNOW we would be better off without you.
Remember seeing the Iraq people protesting the wall just the other day. Shite or Sunni, it doesn’t matter, they have lived together and intermarried for so long. It wasn’t intil the US forces decided to divide the people against each other. Mainly i see, the people of Iraq not supporting anybody that helps the occupation, plus there is the purposed oil rip off to deal with. Let these people be. Get the Fuck Out USA.
Ronald Reagan must be turning in his grave.
I don’t fault Ms. Kohn for not mentioning the Palestinian/Israeli wall. There are so many walls these days it’s hard to keep track of them, and one means the same as all of them; it’s us vs. them: YOU belong and YOU don’t, YOU are accepted and YOU aren’t. I can’t help a bit of partisan bigotry here: Republicans are the party of exclusion, I’ve seen it time and again. It’s something that just makes sense to them. It must be in their genes.
I once worked for a man who could be called an archtypical republican. He supported Bush, thought what he was doing after 9/11 was a “good job”, supported himself off the insurance industry (always a dead giveaway), etc., etc. He built a fence between himself and his neighbor because of an interpersonal tiff. It was as natural a “next step” for him as eating breakfast. Unfortunately the fence wasn’t on his property; it was on his neighbor’s. Neighbor made him move it. I’ve never seen a man more livid.
The simple point I’m trying to make is that for some people “a fence dividing” is the natural choice, the instinctual one. We are left to wonder why.
Indeed, for some people, “When In Doubt, Build A Wall”. ?????????????
This wall will do about as much good as the one that’s being built along the Mexican border! It’s all a complete waste of money and manpower both just like this war!
Mr. Bush, Tear Down That Wall.
Show me a twelve foot high wall and I’ll show you a thirteen foot long ladder, besides no wall ever stopped a mortar round.
And let’s not have walls around loony-bins and prisons either. Or convents, or monasteries.
No writer can retain credibility while dismissing the significance of walls in human history.
However she confirms something I’ve been saying for a while… Bush is far more of an architect than anyone has given him credit for.