As the NY Times reports among other outlets; "U.S. Begins Erecting Wall in Sadr City." To wit...

The construction, which began Tuesday night, is intended to turn the southern quarter of Sadr City near the international Green Zone into a protected enclave, secured by Iraqi and American forces, where the Iraqi government can undertake reconstruction efforts.

“You can’t really repair anything that is broken until you establish security,” said Lt. Col. Dan Barnett, commander of the First Squadron, Second Stryker Cavalry Regiment. “A wall that isolates those who would continue to attack the Iraqi Army and coalition forces can create security conditions that they can go in and rebuild.”

Hmmm... A wall to isolate those who would attack the GZG... That is a crock of shit! As the Iraqis complain...

Followers of anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr denounced the American military's construction of a concrete wall through their Sadr City stronghold in Baghdad, the scene of renewed clashes Friday between his militiamen and U.S. and Iraqi troops.

Hazim al-Araji, a senior aide to al-Sadr in Baghdad, said the wall would turn "the residents to prisoners and the city to a big jail. All Sadr City residents reject this kind of siege on their city."

Walls can be effective in the short term...

Such walls have gone up in many other Baghdad neighborhoods and have been effective in cutting violence as the movement of insurgents was curtailed. But they have also raised some complaints from residents over difficulties in moving in and out through checkpoints.

But, the long term effects are not worth the short term success. It doesn't win the hearts and minds, look at the Warsaw Ghetto or the Berlin Wall. The Israeli Wall is not producing any tangible results either...

What we need to truly embrace is the notion of unifying the separate entities involved. We need to foster relations between the Shi'a, Sunni, and Kurdish populations as opposed to walling them off and arming each side to wage war amongst themselves and against us...

Here is an excellent analysis of what our Maladministration has wrought...

The tactics that Washington is pursuing in Iraq appear to be exacerbating several long-term trends that risk destabilizing Iraq even further and may well also undermine U.S. influence.

Washington’s militant intervention into intra-Shi’ite factional politics is pouring gasoline on that dispute, fomenting civil war between the two most powerful Shi’ite militias in Iraq by encouraging (or ordering?) Maliki to suppress Moqtada’s Mahdi Army. Washington is simultaneously laying the groundwork for a civil war between Iraqi Shi’a and Sunni by funding the organization of numerous local Sunni military units (e.g., the Awakening groups), which could evolve rapidly into a Sunni militia that would challenge the Shi’a since these units are gaining power without a commensurate move toward satisfaction of Sunni grievances. Washington is also fighting Iran’s war in Iraq by intervening in Shi’ite factional disputes on the side of the pro-Iranian Badr faction that constitutes Maliki’s main support. And finally, since Moqtada represents the poor urban Shi’ite underclass beyond the reach of government services, Washington is making war on the poor, a bad foundation indeed for building democracy.

A policy of marginalizing the poor by emphasizing the use of force to suppress their representatives, not to mention collective punishment against the poor themselves through both neglecting to provide services and turning Sadr City into a blockaded ghetto, sets up society for a long period of conflict. (For parallels, check out the impact of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which provoked the formation of Hezbollah; the half century-long civil war against the rural poor in Colombia; and of course the endless sad saga of the mistreatment of the population of Gaza.)

We need to tear down walls, not build them! Sadly, we fail to learn from history...