In today's New York Times...
To the Editor:
Last September, President Bush announced a last-ditch plan to pacify Baghdad: build trenches around the city. "They're building a berm around the city to make it harder for people to come in with explosive devices," he said.
But this insane plan to encircle a metropolis of five million people with a medieval moat was rejected by the Iraqis.
The most recent plan to engineer the city into submission was to build a wall separating Sunnis from Shiites. But the Iraqis don't want to live with apartheid-like divisions, and that plan has just been scrapped ("Iraqi Premier Orders Work Stopped on Wall," news article, April 23).
Rather than invent another civil engineering fantasy, it's time for real solutions to the violence in Iraq: the American troops must withdraw, and Iraqis, with the help of the international community, must begin a process of reconciliation.
Medea Benjamin San Francisco, April 23, 2007 The writer is a co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK
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