The Iraq War on its way to the record books as one of the longest wars in American history is at last, without any lingering doubt, up against a wall. One of the top stories today in the New York Times says it all: “U.S. Erects Baghdad Wall to Keep Sects Apart.” “American military commanders in Baghdad are trying a radical new strategy to quell the widening sectarian violence by building a 12-foot-high, three-mile-long wall separating a historic Sunni enclave from Shiite neighborhoods,” write reporters Edward Wong and David S. Cloud. In other words, when push comes to surge and surge comes up against a brick wall, then just go ahead and do something concrete, like building a wall. The new military strategy becomes ‘ where there is a wall, there is a way.’

The ‘up against the wall’ metaphor is perhaps the most salient description for the current state of George Bush’s sinking ship of state. First, the war that began with air waves of shock and awed even top Democrats into Kerrying favor with fellow patriotic actors and an uncritical inClintonation to just go along with the neocons has now been declared unwinnable by senate majority leader Harry Reid (following similar pronouncements by several retired generals). Let’s face it, Senator Reid is from Nevada so he should know the odds better than anyone.

If you want a second (and George Bush certainly does), opinion polls from right, left and center indicate not just a wall but a growing tidal wave of protest against a worn-out-the-welcome war that drains daily blood from an overtaxed volunteer military and consumes billions of dollars that might have been used to feed the hungry, heal the sick and build bridges or even in an oldstyle Republican way give back money to the people who donate their earnings to the government.

Then there is the wall of distrust that makes Watergate look like a drop in the bucket (and that is a bucket which keeps spilling on the White House but does not seem to stop anywhere inside). This wall has day after day neon billboards that say it all. Flash: the President’s lawyer who used tortuous legal reasoning to justify torturous treatment of individuals who will become corpses before they get habeas gets rewarded as the top legal officer in the government and then forgets why he is the right man for the job. Flash: the anything but sheepish and not very wittsy neocon who planned (and I use that word quite loosely) the Iraq War did such a bang-up job that he gets to withdraw all the credibility of the World Bank, where he is found to be embedded with a an employee who thanks to him now gets more salary than the secretary of state. Flash: the White House turns the clock back to the Nixon era by losing sensitive emails from its political guru. The list goes on and it may already have reached the length of the Great Wall of China before you finish reading this post.

Now that our Army Corps of Engineers has been given a high priority assignment in Baghdad, let’s not let the skills they will learn go to waste. Before President Bush leaves office and vice-President Cheney goes duck hunting again, there is still time to build more walls. What better way to corral the stampede of fleeing Republicans than to build a wall all along the Rio Grande. Let’s call it the “No law east or west of the Pecos” wall and inscribe on it all the individuals and businesses which have ever hired an illegal alien. When that wall is done, we better secure the other border. History suggests we cannot trust the Canadians. Some of them only want to speak French and that fries in the face of corporate American values. I suggest a wall that goes right under Niagara Falls. Think of the aesthetic value when Bush finally realizes the honeymoon of his second term is over. We might as well finish the wall that Israel is building. Just keep the gate open to Armegeddon for all the evangelical tourists to visit. With all this flowering of goodwill walls, America not only would be the sole superpower on the earth, but also the Wallmart of all superpowers that ever were (and in an Ibn Khaldunian moment were eventually not…).

The handwriting is on the wall and it does not take a prophet to read it these days. Bush’s Iraq policy has been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Bush might yet secure an honored niche in future history books as the man who built walls rather than bridges, who walled up inside the White House, wallowing in his own self righteousness with a wall-to-wall carpet bagging that recalls the worst teapot-domed corruption of any presidency. Move over Stonewall Jackson, here comes George W. Bush and the W stands for the wall of shame that he did not even know he was up against.

Luke R. E. Publican