only connect

Three articles in the front section of the New York Times today connect to each other around the theme of connection.

"Line Up and Pick a Dragon: Bhutan Learns to Vote" is about the efforts of the king of this isolated Himalayan country to adopt democratic practices and open itself further to the rest of the world. "Modernity Drills through Rock Toward an Alpine Hamlet" tells a similar story of an inhabitaed but inaccessible (except by walking) Alpine valley, that will soon be reached by a road once a 2,690 foot tunnel is completed. The third story tells what happens when this natural spiritual tug of creation to come together in deeper more intimate relationships is thwarted, "Frustration Unites Sunni and Shiite in Opposition to Baghdad Wall."

Building walls to keep people apart is never a solution. Walls are not a step toward success. They are an admission of failure. At best building a wall is a temporary concession to practical concerns of safety. The irony of the Baghdad Wall is that building it proves that the American hope of a stable unified Iraqi people is a chimera, for now, anyway, while at the same time serving to unite the waring factions against a common enemy they hate more than each other.

Eventually Shiite and Sunni will learn to live together in peace. The American military cannot make them love each other, nor does either side want us to build walls to keep them apart. The situation illustrates so clearly and simply what so many of us have seen for so long. There is no purpose for our being there.