IRAQ--SURGE OF U.S. WALLS & WEAPONS BRINGS ONLY MORE INSURGENTS, MISERY

"Iraqis are already familiar with walls being used to protect key buildings in the capital, but say they will not tolerate them around their neighbourhoods " photo IRUN -April 23, 2007

The walls of separation erected in Baghdad other Iraq cities by the U.S over Iraqi objection, and the U.S. troop surges of 2007-2008, were trumpeted by our politicians then as solutions to the rampant violence inflamed by our invasion. We trained and equipped Iraq’s mostly Shiite army, helped installed checkpoints to control the Sunnis we’d deposed, and then helped train and equip exiled Sunnis to fight the next enemy, Shiite President Assad of Syria. Now the most radical of those Sunnis [ISIS] march towards and begin to encircle Baghdad, where the Shiites are as of yet in charge but threatened, and many Sunnis there are now trapped within, behind those same walls of separation.

Iraqi woman walks past a three-mile-long concrete wall around Baghdad's Sunni enclave of Adhamiyah, April 24, 2007. A similar wall is being constructed in Ghazaliya --photo by Ali Youssef-AFP-Getty

From the 6-26-14 NYT --

“The bodies arrive in twos and threes most every day in the Baghdad morgue now, a grim barometer of the city’s sectarian tensions. Most have gunshot wounds to the head, some have signs of torture, and most of them are Sunnis. …

In the recent abductions and killings, Baghdad’s Sunnis see sinister signs that the walls surrounding their neighborhoods, built by the Americans to protect them, could also entrap them, making them easy prey for the newly emboldened Shiite militias, some of them the same ones that executed Sunnis by the truckload in the bad years.”

The U.S. says it wants sectarian conflicts to end, but cannot bring itself to stop relying on guns and bombs as the ultimate solution, sold to an ever-shifting cast of characters.

Once again a surge of violence and grief in Baghdad—brought to us by the international trust in weapons and violence as the way to impose security [in this case security of oil supply]. This business of weaponized security will never bring peace to anyone. It is the Father of all Lies, and the town crier of so many government and political groups; the daily bread of so many military and media machines. How long will we continue to trust in these lies which continue to bring us so many failed states abroad—and also threaten our own USA with materialistic godless failure from within?

Time to go well beyond President Reagan -- “Uncle Sam, tear down these walls.” All nations, “Beat your swords into plowshares.” As pleaded for by the head of the United Nations, all countries should join a moratorium of all military support and arms sales to all Middle East states and factions. The only way to begin real talk of peace is to stop the message sent by bombs and bullets.

Small part of Green Wall around Baghdad U.S. Embassy-WaPo photo

Three walls desperately needing to come tumbling down.

This July 4^th, consider again converting more from our personal support of walls, weapons, and war. Ande and I continue to strive, yet with incomplete success, to pay less war tax [50% of federal income tax], by earning less, and limiting W-4 with-holding, and 1099 payments. See the July 1, 2013 posting. Work and pray for peace, don’t prepay for war.