Antiquities or children: Hugh Hewitt rips on Robert Scheer for contrived hysteria over looting

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | Wednesday, April 16, 2003 | Hugh Hewitt

[JohnHuang2]

The always amusing Robert Scheer, "columnist-fanatic" for the Los Angeles Times, never fails to grasp any straw that gives him a chance to rant about the Bush administration. Yesterday he was feverish over the weekend news from Iraq: "Destruction of one of the world's most significant collections of antiquities." Scheer arches his eyebrow and notes that the oil fields were protected, but not the museum. Get it?

Scheer is simply echoing a complaint about the antiquities that has ricocheted around the elite media. This is a convenient excuse for disgraced gloom-mongers to switch the subject from the liberation of Iraq to the familiar rhythm of anti-Bush chants. My guess is that not one of the regular talking heads on cable had ever heard of the Iraqi museum until it became an opportunity to turn great news into an occasion for disaster.

Proponents of the liberation of Iraq ought not to shy away from this story. Rather, they ought to use it to frame the question of the whether or not this war was just: Forced to choose between leaving the museum unharmed and freeing the children from the now infamous children's jail, which would you choose? On a broader scale, would you prefer the order of Saddam's regime, including the horrific practices of its jails, or a week of looting and chaos?

If you missed it, go back and read Jack Kelly's riveting but revolting USA Today story from April 14:

BAGHDAD – Pictures of dead Iraqis, with their necks slashed, their eyes gouged out and their genitals blackened, fill a bookshelf. Jails cells, with dried blood on the floor and rusted shackles bolted to the walls, line the corridors. And the screams of what could be imprisoned men in an underground detention center echo through air shafts and swear pipes.

Read the whole story. Scheer and his colleagues in the anti-war crowd haven't, and probably won't. They don't care. But the looting of the antiquities museum fills them with rage.

The absurdity of this line of complaint about the looting goes unremarked upon because an entire slice of big media has completely abandoned any idea about what differentiates good and evil. CNN's stunning admission that it covered-up for Saddam for a decade is just the most obvious evidence that modern "journalism" has not just lost, but positively rejected, any idea of a moral compass.

When the gates of the Nazi death camps swung open in 1945, Scheer would no doubt have been writing about the destruction done to Berlin. A moral blindness so complete can not be credited with any capacity to see good and evil.

Scheer's not alone of course. His lack of talent combined with the Los Angeles Times' contempt for its readership just operates to give him so much rope that he inevitably hangs himself in public. The more unconscious among the morally bankrupt simply parrot the storyline as it emerges.

Tim Russert on Sunday made the mistake of asking the secretary of defense how America could have "allowed" the looting of the museum to happen. Rumsfeld immediately seized on the word "allowed" – which, of course, carries with it culpability – and he would not let go, even in the face of Russert's attempt to recast the question in order to avoid being Rummified.

The defense secretary then gave a tutorial on war: Bad things happen in war. But greater good comes out of it. Rumsfeld didn't specify the children running free to their parents or the destruction of a system of such cruel repression that it makes ordinary people turn away, but that's the wellspring of his disgust with dilettantes prattering about museums.

Of course, it is a loss that the museum was ransacked. But the freeing of the people of Iraq was well worth that cost. And had the diversion of troops to protect government buildings, including museums, cost an additional soldier's or Marine's life, that would have been too high a price to pay.

Human life matters more than bones, clay tablets and ancient jewels. That's the bottom line. It is also a dividing line.

The left is reeling, confused by the triumph of the American military in a noble cause and the revelation of a clearly, undeniably evil regime. This sequence of events upends the left because it destroys so many of its pillars.

The American military is never supposed to triumph in a just cause.

The use of force is never supposed to be unambiguously revealed as just.

There is not supposed to be such things as "good" and "evil."

But there, in every paper and on every television screen, are evidences of all these things – powerful and persuasive evidences that ordinary Americans understand and absorb, and which will shape politics for decades to come.

The left is defeated and its American members know it. And they are bitter. And increasingly alone.

[Deb]

I wouldn't worry about the museum "treasures". In a couple of weeks the looters will try to sell the stuff, find out it's fake and do some re-decorating. Think of the museum as a Home Depot.

But why do you suppose the Iraqis burned their own library? Weird, huh?

[Billthedrill]

I did. In fact, there is no such international law. Was that your point?

It's really pretty simple. While it may be a nice policy to respect the history of the fellows who are trying to kill you it is in no way an obligation, moral, financial, legal or otherwise. We spared Kyoto, we bombed Dresden and more to the point, Monte Cassino. The latter was perhaps the best pure example of what I'm talking about - a priceless, ancient artifact of Christianity that was only briefly a German observation post that was flattened utterly because it might have been a defensive position. Too bad, but since it was my future Dad downhill I have kind of a vested interest in having reduced the place to rubble. So do all the other sons and daughters who didn't lose their chance at life so someone could leaf through the undeniably beautiful illuminated manuscripts.

I'm as big an ancient history fan as anyone, having bought some certified fakes along with some genuine articles. I own a couple of cylinder seals that are four thousand years old. If I thought that it would save one person's life I'd stomp them flat. Four thousand years from now if somebody did the same thing to something I made, I'd applaud them. Priorities.

[lonewacko_dot_com]

"Priorities"

Referring to the library fires, Robert Fisk says:

"I raced to the offices of the occupying power, the US Marines' Civil Affairs Bureau..."

Now, let's choose to believe Fisk's account. If Robert "I got threatened by a 10-year-old" Fisk can race between the library and the above offices, well, can't we assume that the area is at least a little bit secure? Maybe it's really not a choice between a 2-year-old child and a 200-year-old scrap of paper.

Maybe it's an indication that we didn't set up a volunteer police force soon enough, or that we didn't really care about such inconsequential items as "artefacts that dated back 10,000 years, from one of the world's earliest civilisations... The development of writing, abstract counting, the wheel and agriculture were all charted in its exhibitions."

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The American military is never supposed to triumph in a just cause.

I hope this victory stays wedged in their gapes for a long, long time.

[lonewacko_dot_com]

Bear in mind that there were also reports of looters taking secret police files. We should have protected them as well. If people want to loot office chairs and Pampers, well, hey. But, I think we should have drawn the line when it came to sensitive items, like the secret police files, libraries, museums, etc. etc.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

For me the bottom line is that Saddam & Co. Looters

were in charge of Iraq for decades. Anything they didn't want for themselves is probably not worth having.

Now the secret police files, that's another matter--but still, there could have been a shredder in place for them if Saddam cared about it . . .

[goldstategop]

Robert Scheer didn't have a problem with mayhem and looting in Los Angeles in 1992.

[hotpotato]

I posted this from artnews:

Problems of Sumerian art, looted and fake antiquities from Iraq(my title). "Look, it's a no-brainer because, unless you know for a fact this Sumerian piece has been in some English lord's collection for years, you can bet you're probably trading with Saddam Hussein and it's probably all stolen stuff with cooked-up, fake provenances. As a museum director, don't even bother with it, just hands off."

[solzhenitsyn]

Realistically, how many men do you suppose it would have taken to protect all the locations you feel we should have been protecting? If it was more important than getting the war over with, why weren't you over there guarding a library or one of the countless prisons or government offices that might contain "sensitive files"? It's easy to sit safely at home and snipe and second-guess while others are over there being shot at.

[Russell Scott]

Animals and inanimate objects are far more important to liberals than human lives.

[RonDog]

The always amusing Robert Scheer, "columnist-fanatic" for the Los Angeles Times, never fails to grasp any straw that gives him a chance to rant about the Bush administration.

From www.robertscheer.com:

ROBERT SCHEER, a journalist with over 30 years experience, has built his reputation on the strength of his social and political writing. His columns appear in newspapers across the country, and his in-depth interviews have made headlines. As Scheer creates his weekly national and local columns, he draws upon a wealth of experience and knowledge. Between 1964 and 1969, he was Vietnam correspondent, managing editor and editor in chief of Ramparts magazine. From 1976 to 1993, he served as a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, where he wrote articles on such diverse topics as the Soviet Union, arms control, national politics and the military. He is currently a contributing editor at The Times, as well as a contributing editor for The Nation magazine.   Scheer has interviewed every president from Richard Nixon on through Bill Clinton. He conducted the famous 1976 Playboy interview with Jimmy Carter, in which the then-presidential candidate admitted to have lusted in his heart...

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[Publius6961]

What the "progressives" (AKA red-diaper babies) fail to note is that Iraq has proven to have been as brutal and monstrous as Germany, and again its people as complicit as the Germans.
Mostrous behavior on that scale is not possible without the direct complicity of thousands, and the tacit approval of millions.

How anyone can expect an "instant civilized" society under those circumstances?

[Publius6961]

Except, that's what we're supposed to do under international law.

There's that brainless phrase again!

Mind telling us what it is, how it came about, who made the decisions, how the decisions were made, and whether there are two sides to every expressed expectation?

Think you can handle that, brainiac?

[Publius6961]

Were the manuscripts from the burned library fake as well?

Manuscripts?
Make that "Dumb-as-rocks lonewacko" and you might be worth further reading.
For the humor value.

[Publius6961]

Maybe it's really not a choice between a 2-year-old child and a 200-year-old scrap of paper.

If you think that a 200-year old scrap of paper is an archeological treasure, you are delusional, as well as ignorant.

[eureka!]

What I also found interesting was this tidbit on sales of Iraqi antiquities in 1996. Inside jobs for years is what we will find, IMHO...

[Lauratealeaf]

Fox had a crawl running tonight-UK experts on the antiquities,who visited the Museum, believed that it was full of fakes and that the real treasures were removed long ago by Saddam.Can't wait to see the libs faces, when they realize they have been tearing their garments, over paper mache knock offs!!

That museum had only been open for the past six months after having been closed since the Gulf War. That is odd. I am suspicious about that. The past eleven plus years have given them plenty of time to shuffle the artifacts to any European country and I bet the French have received some. This museum was a part of the Saddam regime, therefore, all of its employees are suspect. It has been apparent to me for days that this looting was a cover for a theft that had already taken place.

I have a degree in Art History and love art and antiquities. I know that there is so much politics involved in gathering artifacts and when a regime is as corrupt as Saddam Hussein's there can be no confidance that the artifacts are authentic or were not taken by the regime for its own profit.

Hence, that is why the inventory has also gone missing. And the freepers here who fell for the hoax were so willing to jump to conclusions and blame the U.S. military. They have lost any credibility to me.

[browardchad]

Fisk this.

Buried in an article in today's ultra-liberal, anti-war LA Times:

Rumors are rampant that the trade in Iraqi art picked up in Paris before the war began and that some of it traveled through Syria. It's only a matter of time until more Iraqi loot appears in the back rooms of dealers in London, Zurich and other major cities, just like the artistic spoils of the war in Afghanistan, experts say.

Some objects make long journeys with astonishing speed; others snake their way through bazaars of neighboring countries. But whatever the timeline or the itinerary may be, the action begins at home.

"There are people within Iraq who buy this stuff from looters for export, Iraqis who deal with Iraqi antiquities," said attorney John Henry Merryman, a leading authority on art law and ethics who teaches law and art at Stanford University. Every nation that is rich in archeological sites has a market for antiquities, he said, and Iraq is no different. Iraqi "finders" feed a network of middlemen who "then get in touch with collectors and dealers in foreign countries," he said.

A Northern California scholar and collector of Iraqi art, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he was contacted surreptitiously before the war and told that Iraqi antiquities would soon become available. He speculated that the thieves acted in accordance with a plan, but no such design has been revealed. Reports from museum guards indicate that the looters simply grabbed whatever was available....

...there has been little interchange between the museum and its foreign counterparts during the past few decades. The only published sources about the collection available to most scholars are catalogs of traveling exhibitions staged many years ago.

So, artifacts are believed to have been stolen before the war, there has been no scholarly accounting of the authenticity of the actual contents of the museum for decades, and at least 4,000 artifacts were stolen during the first Gulf War -- a war in which our troops did not set foot in Baghdad.

If you are naive enough to quote Fisk's drivel, then you are probably naive enough to assume that Saddam and his cronies were actually interested in preserving valuable antiquities for the very same people they systematically plundered and exterminated.

[Wild Irish Rogue]

" I have a degree in Art History and love art and antiquities."

I just cannot imagine Saddam leaving priceless art in a public place-anything of value was probably in his Palaces or sold off, for his own enrichment.Mark Rich was known to broker shady deals in the Mideast, wonder if he dabbled in art?

[blackie]

A powerful indictment of the left ... perfect! :)