Yeah, I know that Hajii is used as a derogatory term for Iraqi insurgents by US Forces. It's at least an endearing one. I suspect that there are quite a few more...Used more than a few myself.
However, Crusader AXE has this feeling he's been here before, in some past existence, where the Hobbits had a great fucking idea, and he sat on his desterier, leg around the saddle horn, Hobbitslicer over his shoulder dripping blood and wondering what the fuck the bastards were getting them into this time...like walling off the enemy. Except in this case, they aren't the goddamn enemy. Or if they are, the whole thing is not only failed policy but a really incredible waste of time.
" The wall has already drawn intense criticism from residents of the neighborhood, who say that it will increase sectarian tensions and that it is part of a plan by the Shiite-led Iraqi government to box in the minority Sunnis.
A doctor in Adhamiya, Abu Hassan, said the wall would transform the residents into caged animals.
"It's unbelievable that they treat us in such an inhumane manner,"
he said in a telephone interview. "They're trying to isolate us from
other parts of Baghdad. The hatred will be much greater between the two
sects.The Native Americans were treated better than us," he added. For obvious reasons, the AXE isn't impressed yet. No, they haven't been treated worse than the tribes...yet.
But, times could be coming. Famous walls that didn't work include those around, oh, what did they call those things in Warsaw, Prague, Paris, Rome, London? Ghettos, something like that? While Berlin comes to mind immediately, the analogy is not quite apt. That was an attempt to keep people in; this isn't exactly an attempt to keep people in or out, but apart. Like the ghettos were. Like the great wall of China was. Keep the barbarians apart and...except, it doesn't work.
Now in China, there were more of the barbarians than honest Han martial artists could Chow Fat and Flying Guillotine or Crouching Tiger/Laughing Hyena to death. For some reason, the movies omit the fact that the noble women generally had bound feet and had trouble walking any great distance, which made leaping around with a sword a la Jackie Chan on jumping beans even less likely. And, the guards at the wall were corrupt, so...open gates make for new neighbors.
Hadrian's Wall did work pretty well...until the Legions left. Then it kind of went south... Actually, the Scots, Picts, and Free Range Britons went south along with the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. So, I guess this could work, so long as the imperial legions stay...except the idea, I thought, was to get the imperial legions -- the US Army, Marines and possibly Blackwater and KBR the hell out of the place.
No, the European ghettos are the predecessor of this really bad idea. Since the Islamic equivalent of a Jew in this analogy is a Sunni in Iraq (Or, a Shiite in Saudi), not hard to see why the Sunnis who are not members of an insurgent group might suddenly feel the need to get out the old AK 47 and prepare to defend family, honor and their lives. Of course, we obviously don't get it. "As soldiers pushed forward with the construction, Defense Secretary Robert Gates insisted to the Iraqi government that it had to pass by late summer a series of measures long sought by the White House that were aimed at advancing reconciliation between the warring Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs." Yeah, so now we have really obvious contradictions, unless we're doing foreign policy and nation building by way of Robert Frost. So instead of Jeffersonian Democracy, we now expect the middle east to run like a New England town meeting? Problem is, of course, that the obviously don't get it...
"
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." Now please don't think that the AXE is surprised that they don't understand Robert Frost. But, the conservative revolution has certainly come a long way from "MR Gorbachev, tear down this wall..." Let's consider Wiki's discussion of the Roman Ghetto...as a recovering Catholic, Tiffanyist and anti-theist (if there is a god, we got issues!), the AXE is always willing to look to the Pope for a really fucking bad idea.
Rome
In 1555 Pope Paul IV created the Roman Ghetto and issued papal bull Cum nimis absurdum, forcing Jews to live in a specified area. The area of Rome chosen for the ghetto was the most undesirable quarter of the city, owing to constant flooding by the Tiber River. At the time of its founding, the four-block area was designated to contain roughly 2,000 inhabitants. However, over the years, the Jewish community grew, which caused severe overcrowding. Since the area could not expand horizontally (the ghetto was surrounded by high walls), the Jews built vertical additions to their houses, which blocked the sun from reaching the already dank and narrow streets. Life in the Roman Ghetto was one of crushing poverty, due to the severe restrictions placed upon the professions that Jews were allowed to perform. This was the last of the original ghettos to be abolished in Western Europe; not until 1870, when the kingdom of Italy conquered Rome from the Pope, was the Ghetto finally opened, with the walls themselves being torn down in 1888. Due to the three hundred plus years of isolation from the rest of the city, the Jews of the Roman Ghetto developed their own dialect, known as Giudeo-romanesco, which differs from the dialect of the rest of the city in its preservation of 16th-century dialectical forms and its liberal use of romanized Hebrew words. So, if I get this, we have a situation where an Islamic nation was invaded based on the ideology of the neoconservatives who were largely students of Leo Strauss, a somewhat looney Jewish philosopher of ideas from the University of Chicago. After a helluva long time, we have reached the point where we are encouraging the ghettoization of the Sunnis as a way of safeguarding the "people" from them. Kind of like Rome...
Or Ireland. The Normans erected a fence around Dublin, the Pale. The plan was to keep the races -- Irish and Anglo-Norman seperated. The Duke of Clarence, Fourth Earl of Ulster -- except the O'Neil was the King of Ulster and the Duke kept his fat ass in Dublin, quaffing watered precursors of Guinness and trying to impregnate the Fourth Earless of Ulster. The Pale was codified by the Statues of Kilkenny ( not be confused with the Killbill of Tarrantino) which declared among other things...
"Also, it is ordained and established, that no alliance by marriage, gossipred, fostering of children, concubinage or by amour, nor in any other manner, be hencefoth made between the English and Irish of one part, or of the other part; and that no Englishman, nor other person, being at peace, do give or sell to any Irishman, in time of peace or war, horses or armour, nor any manner of victuals in time of war; and if any shall do to the contrary, and thereof be attainted, he shall have judgment of life and member, as a traitor to our lord the king."
Other statues "ordained and established that"
- "every Englishman do use the English language, and be named by an English name, leaving off entirely the manner of naming used by the Irish; and that every Englishman use the English custom, fashion, mode of riding and apparel, according to his estate" (II)
- " that no Englishman, having disputes with any other Englishman, shall henceforth ... be governed in the termination of their disputes by March law nor Brehon law, " (III)
- " that no Irishman of the nations of the Irish be admitted into any cathedral or collegiate church by provision, collation, or presentation of any person, nor to any benefice of Holy Church, amongst the English of the land" (XIII)
Didn't work for shit, by the way. The bare-arsed Irish from beyond the Pale kind of kicked English Ass if they ventured outside it. The heterosexuals in the garrison were interested in women as opposed to each other -- although the image of Guy Grisborne and the Duke of Clarence doing a courtly dance together is enchanting -- so they ventured outside. Food also at times seemed like a nice idea...so, social intercourse led to sexual congress led to msicengenation and the end of the pale and the creation of various dynasties like the Fitgeralds, the Fitzmaurice, the Fitzparticks and so on.
So, in the long run it won't work. It probably won't work in the short run. With the Jews, the ghettos sort of worked to keep them in because the language was different and there really wasn't a major Jewish threat. In this case, should things get too wierd, Saudi Arabia, Eygpt and the rest of the overwhelmingly Sunni Islamic world will blow into the solution.
Ah, good time. The triumph of cabalistic thinking, failed solutions from the past and a total debacle reaching back in time to...Ozymandias. Actually the thought of Wolfie and his girlfriend doing the two-headed camel gives new meaning to the idea of the messiah and the rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem...
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