Dialectic of Bipedism

It would take a resuscitated Freud properly to probe the repression, projection and assorted psychic acrobatics of the ineffable GW Bush and his cohort of bipeds. For example, consider the decades of Cold War criticism of the prison created by the Soviet bloc states as exemplified by the Berlin Wall. This terrible monument was supposed to illustrate all that was cruel and inhumane about those systems and the contrasting delights of Freedom. Yet all around us, walls now go up as the preferred solution to social ills, and suddenly we are supposed to applaud these universal symbols of thralldom and oppression.

We have the Mexican Wall, which is supposed to divert the flow of immigrants (and will be about as successful in doing so as the New Orleans levees in holding back the Mississippi), the wall around the Gaza Strip and the West Bank wall to herd the Palestinians into their pens. Now comes the Sadr City wall in Baghdad as reported in today’s New York Times.

This one is supposed to ‘stem the infiltration of militia fighters,’ according to Michael Gordon who a few paragraphs later dutifully repeats the Bushite falsehood that the Sadrist faction is an ‘Iranian-backed group’ battled by the ‘Iraqi forces’, who are by implication not Iranian-backed. Ha ha.

Every expert not consuming crystal meth knows this is total propaganda by the White House cynics who engendered this war and, not content with their sterling record so far, are eager to carry it further eastward. Gordon and the Times, burdened with a shoddy record of complicity, should be ashamed of repeating this line as they know full well that it is laying the groundwork for the war’s expansion.

The language appearing in this account is telling: Gordon quotes an American officer that they want to turn Sadr City into a ‘protected enclave’ and who assures worried residents that they have no desire to stop government services from coming in. The Gaza ghetto should be a calming precedent for local residents.

Once the wall is completed, and the American-backed Iraqi enemies of local residents are in control of it, the lady trying to get in and out to buy a loaf of bread may find those promises a little thin. But of course by then, it will be too late, and new excuses will be offered—by Michael Gordon & company.

Maybe Bush has been reading Robert Frost: ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ That’s quite true, especially if your own brain is a stand-alone gated community.