What "peace" looks like

The surge worked. Violence in Iraq is down.
What's "peace" look like?
Here's a description of Samarra in September, 2008:

"[The First Brigade Combat team] had reinforced a berm - a continuous mound of earth - that surrounded the city, constructed watchtowers for constant surveillance, and set up three check-points through which much of the city's population passed. Samarra was broken into a dozen neighborhoods, each one protected by a perimeter of blast walls."
[Iraq: Before & After, and Now, Joshua Hammer, The New York Review of Books, 4 Dec 2008]

Recall:

Baghdad's highway of death takes on new life
Mar 25, 2008
BAGHDAD (AFP) — The sale in Baghdad of peaked caps boasting "I survived Route Irish" have slumped -- reaching the capital's international airport is no longer the perilous dash it used to be, and the slogan is losing its relevance.
...
"We are turning it into an impregnable security corridor. No one will be able to penetrate it to be able to plant roadside bombs," [Police] Colonel Asadi told AFP, while inspecting one of the endless checkpoints set up along the four-lane highway.

Yes - the road is now safe... it is "an impregnable security corridor".

To achieve security, we've turned Iraq into a patchwork of barricaded neighborhoods, walled cities, and impregnable security corridors.

... and we still see headlines like this:

Baghdad bombs kill 20, 1 hits Green Zone entry

... this dated TODAY!

Imagine an American city in which suicide bombers killed 20 people every couple of weeks.

Stop the madness!