In Warsaw, the Nazis walled in the Jewish section of the city in 1940 after they occupied Poland:
The Warsaw Ghetto was finally established by the German Governor-General Hans Frank on October 16, 1940. At this time, the population of the Ghetto was estimated to be about 440,000 people, about 37% of the population of Warsaw. However, the size of the Ghetto was about 4.5% of the size of Warsaw. Nazis then closed off the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world on November 16th that year, building a wall.
And now the US military is doing the much same thing in Baghdad, walling off a section of the city based on the religious and ethnic composition of its inhabitants:
BAGHDAD- A wall U.S. troops are building around a Sunni enclave in Baghdad came under increasing criticism on Saturday, with residents calling it “collective punishment” and a local leader saying construction began without the neighborhood council’s approval.
The U.S. military says the wall in Baghdad is meant to secure the minority Sunni community of Azamiyah, which “has been trapped in a spiral of sectarian violence and retaliation.” The area, located on the eastern side of the Tigris River, would be completely gated, with entrances and exits manned by Iraqi soldiers, the U.S. military said earlier this week.
But some residents of the neighborhood, which is surrounded by Shiite areas, complained that they had not been consulted in advance about the barrier.
“This will make the whole district a prison. This is collective punishment on the residents of Azamiyah,” said Ahmed al-Dulaimi, a 41-year-old engineer who lives in the area. “They are going to punish all of us because of a few terrorists here and there.”
Just sayin ….
Building walls over there, so they don’t have to build them here. Oh. Never mind.
Oh, you can never have enough walls … or fences.
I was listening to NPR yesterday when they were discussing it (the Iraq wall) and the commentator mentioned the irony how this particular issue has unified the Sunni and Shia neighborhoods – they all hate it.
Described as twelve feet high and three miles long – for a President [sic] that claims to idolize Reagan so much – George sure is going trigger-happy with Berlin-style walls.
On the other hand, the wall protects Iraqis from those dangerous Americans.
And it prevents them from escaping those same Merkins. Dual purpose!
not ghetto, vietnamization!!!!
burn the villiages, Relocate the peasants,- thats what we have to do!!!!!
Boy was that successful!!!!!! Ths bastards will never learn. Death squads, build walls to seperate the “insurgents, Keep the natives so poor that all they have time to think about is their next meal, and look at the folks involved. New faces ? bullshit. Abrams, cheney, rumsfeld, north, negroponte,– lets all add one name each and I will bet ya that we can all come up with more blasts from the past!
The only names that won’t show up will be the dead ones.
Nah- not a ghetto– just vietnam.