Good Fences, Good Neighbors

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down!"

It’s hard to think of Nouri al-Maliki and Robert Frost in the same sentence, but the Prime Minister of Iraq is sounding like that most American of poets these days, ordering us to stop the construction of concrete walls around the most violent areas in Baghdad.

The Shiite national leader acted after Sunni residents complained that their neighborhoods were being turned into ghettoes.

There’s just no way of pleasing some folks.