Building a Wall

“Those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it.” — Georges Santayana

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So, the US wants to create “gated communities” out of neighborhoods in and around Baghdad?

From the Washington Post:

The U.S. military is walling off at least 10 of Baghdad’s most violent neighborhoods and using biometric technology to track some of their residents, creating what officers call “gated communities” in an attempt to carve out oases of safety in this war-ravaged city.

[snip]

In some sealed-off areas, troops armed with biometric scanning devices will compile a neighborhood census by recording residents’ fingerprints and eye patterns and will perhaps issue them special badges, military officials said. At least 10 Baghdad neighborhoods are slated to become or already are gated communities, said Brig. Gen. John F. Campbell, the deputy commander of American forces in Baghdad.

[snip]

“We can pull fingerprints off all the bad stuff they handle and run it through the database,” [Capt. Darren] Fowler said in an e-mail. “The soldiers’ favorite show to watch is CSI. We actually get some techniques from them.”

Fowler is also considering issuing identification badges to every resident of the gated community. But the area will not be closed off to outsiders, because its markets are crucial to Sunnis who live in nearby Shiite neighborhoods and are too afraid to go to their own bazaars, he said.

Building a wall … to “protect” the minority population inside … creating a census of those living there … and issuing “security badges” for identification?

It sounds familiar somehow…

Oh…right.

Gate of the Krakow Ghetto, Poland
From the Holocaust Research Project

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“Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results.” — Machiavelli