Posted on 04/14/2003 2:40:24 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
BAGHDAD, 15 April 2003 — So yesterday was the burning of books. First came the looters, then came the arsonists. It was the final chapter in the sack of Baghdad. The National Library and Archives — a priceless treasure of Ottoman historical documents including the old royal archives of Iraq — were turned to ashes in 3,000 degrees of heat. Then the Islamic Library of Qur’ans at the Ministry of Religious Endowment was set ablaze. I saw the looters.
One of them cursed me when I tried to reclaim a book of Islamic law from a boy who could have been no more than 10 years old. Amid the ashes of hundreds of years of Iraqi history, I found just one file blowing in the wind outside: Pages and pages of handwritten letters between the court of Sherif Hussein of Makkah — who started the Arab revolt against the Turks for Lawrence of Arabia — and the Ottoman rulers of Baghdad.
And the Americans did nothing. All over the filthy yard they blew, letters of recommendation to the courts of Arabia, demands for ammunition for Ottoman troops, reports on the theft of camels and attacks on pilgrims, all of them in delicate hand-written Arabic script. I was holding in my hands the last Baghdad vestiges of Iraq’s written history. But for Iraq, this is Year Zero; with the destruction of the antiquities in the Museum of Archaeology on Saturday and the burning of the National Archives and then the Qur’anic library of the ministry, the cultural identity of Iraq is being erased.
Why? Who set these fires? For what insane purpose is this heritage being destroyed? When I caught sight of the Qur’anic library burning — there were flames 100 feet high bursting from the windows — I raced to the offices of the occupying power, the US Marines’ civil affairs bureau, to report what I had seen. An officer shouted to a colleague that “this guy says some Biblical (sic) library is on fire.” I gave the map location, the precise name — in Arabic and English — of the fire, I said that the smoke could be seen from three miles away and it would take only five minutes to drive there. Half an hour later, there wasn’t an American at the scene — and the flames were now shooting 200 feet into the air.
There was a time when the Arabs said that their books were written in Cairo, printed in Beirut and read in Baghdad. Now they burn libraries in Baghdad. In the National Archives were not just the Ottoman records of the caliphate, but even the dark years of the country’s modern history, hand-written accounts of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, an entire library of Western newspapers — bound volumes of the Financial Times were lying on the pavement — and microfiche copies of Arabic newspapers going back to the early 1900s.
Fisk's only paradigm is Communism; here he makes a Khmer Rouge reference.
And we're not supposed to notice that Fisk values historical artifacts over the liberty of living people. In the classic Stalinist/totalitarian mindset, the private life is dead: there is no individual, only classes and nations. Thus, as long as the nation lives on, the life of the individual is irrelevant (paraphrasing Hitler).
Hussein held these items hostage (otherwise he could have protected them), and the blame is his.
Don't forget to wipe your Clymer.
So was it looted first? Or just burnt? I find it very strange people would burn a library full of antique books when supposedly they were stealing everything that wasn't nailed down. Maybe there was more to this building than met the eye?
Fisk dateline 2010, "as the election of Hillary Clinton and the subsequent people's revolution in Amerika have been a hard to understand movement, we are now provided with a symbolic moment perfectly characterizing the revolution and its glory in the burning of the Library of Congress.... "
"Several members of the worker's revolution set ablaze this insidious institution which housed the propaganda of the Amerikan fascist regime for over a century. You could see the joy in the people's faces as they grabbed original copies of the so-called Declaration of Independence and set them afire along with copies of the reprehensible fascist dogma known as the Federalist papers. Various oppressed peasants were able to redeclare property such as 18 and 19th century furniture that the fascists had claimed for themselves....."
"It was a final and welcome destruction to the plague that had become rugged individualism and superstitious beliefs in "God-given" rights."
Yes, but it somehow sounds more noble when Fisk says it.
So was it looted first? Or just burnt?
So far, everything that I've seen burned has been "looted" first. The only things that appear to be burning are symbols of Hussein's regime.
I will never be able to comprehend the mentality of those who celebrate the burning of books. Who would destroy the records of history so no one could read them? That is about as small minded as a human mind can descend.
And who was complaining when the Iraqi's plundered Kuwaiti museums, looting and destroying many priceless artifacts (many of which were lost forever). What goes around comes around.
This is a good point. Why would these people burn down their own heritage. Did he ask them? I doubt it. Do they see it as part of Saddam's heritage? Do they hate him that much? Fisk should have asked why. He should spend a little time trying to figure out where all this bottled up rage is coming from. And then he should ask himself why he wanted them to remain under Saddam's evil thumb.
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