In the aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre, the spotlight has been trained once more on people who for some reason or another are isolated from the rest of society.
Some are separated by mental illness, some by economic circumstances, others by the fear of rejection due to an alternative lifestyle. History drips crimson from conflicts over the artificial obstacles that societies create to keep their members apart. One thing is clear: Invisible walls that segment one section of society from another are bad for society as a whole.
Why the U.S. government has it in its head that building physical walls to quite literally isolate people from one another is a good idea, I can't even imagine. Construction has begun in Iraq with the intent of walling off Sunni neighborhoods from the surrounding Shi'ites, as though dividing the country with concrete will somehow successfully unite the Iraqi people.
The military touts the system of walls, checkpoints and troops with biometric scanning devices in Fallujah and Tal Afar as having dramatically impacted the levels of violence in those cities.
Ten neighborhoods in Baghdad are in some stage of the walling-off process, causing cries of protest from Sunnis, Shi'ites, and even Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. One might ask why the United States, already wallowing in accusations of imposing its way of life on the Iraqis, would so adamantly ignore the concerns of the people who are supposedly running the country.
It's a problem that the United States has had all over the world in recent years, and the cringing credibility still skulking on the outskirts of foreign policy is taking another self-imposed shot to the foot by the clear policy of only supporting those democracies that support the Bush administration.
You can almost hear the blood pressure in Washington shooting upward as countries around the world keep electing the likes of Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Haiti's Rene Preval. Someone apparently gave these people one too many doses of that effervescent ""independence"" stuff.
Now the Iraqis are telling the U.S. military to stop slicing their cities apart and the United States is making no guarantees that it will do any such thing. It makes the popular Republican pundit call against ""cutting and running"" utterly laughable.
It would appear that the Bush administration has decided that turning Iraq into a gigantic penal colony, all neatly sectioned into Sunni and Shi'ite cells, is the only way to get the situation under control.
But what happens when the guards go home? Is this why the president doesn't want to allow a timetable to be set for troop withdrawal?
Policy in Iraq is looking suspiciously like a plan to pacify the country by any means necessary until after the '08 election, when it can be quietly abandoned.
Remember Afghanistan? FOX News certainly doesn't.
Looking at the situation from a practical standpoint, it is mystifying that anyone still thinks that being in Iraq is a good idea. It has become a purely political beast that the American public is getting tired of dancing with. Politicians created it, and politicians are keeping it alive.
Regular citizens are beginning to wonder aloud whether their money might not be better spent on health care or education than stuffing the gullet of the wheezing war machine. Here's to hoping.
Enye Langree is a senior majoring in Spanish. Please send responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
