Mark Steyn: Looting Iraq's 'heritage'

Jerusalem Post ^ | 4-29-03 | Mark Steyn

[dawn53]

Wow! I'm a Steyn fan, but this one was especially good. Thanks for the post.

[Mr. Mulliner]

Another Steyn

(By the way, I need to go off your ping list, at least for a few weeks.)

[Democratic_Machiavelli]

bookmark bump

[Greybird]

I've rarely seen a more tortured piece of flimsy rationalization.

Part of the frigging POINT of invading Iraq was so that matters of heritage -- whether economic, cultural, or personal -- would be preserved from the effects of being looted. (One of several reasons, shifting with the winds of responding to the media, but we won't get into that now.)

Standing by while these museums were looted, whether by plan or by opportunism, was irresponsible. Rumsfeld had far more soldiers and Marines guarding the glitz of presidential palaces. He also doesn't read the text of the Geneva Conventions that he and Bush were oh, so furious about Al-Jazeera supposedly flouting, for those same treaties obligate us under international law to prevent "pillage," described as early as 1907 as a crime against humanity.

And if the repositories of irreplaceable -- unlike oil -- artifacts and historical records are cleaned out, what kind of physical heritage will the Iraqis be able to offer when they are re-integrated with the rest of peaceable civilization?

Steyn is a swinish philistine. He's no different, in effect, from the caliph who said, before he ordered the torching of the library at Alexandria over a thousand years ago: "If these books say what is said in the Holy Qu'ran, they are superfluous. If they say what is not said in the Holy Qu'ran, they are pernicious." The caliph would have been right at home in an office next to Steyn at the National Post.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

I can't help but believe that you don't understand what Steyn is saying. Basically he is slamming those who are critical of the U.S. for not giving the past priority over the present.  I can't help but agree.  Also, your Caliph example is somewhat suspect.  The legend that the volumes from the library took six months to burn is incredible.  Also, the evidence that there even was a library in the Serapeum are sketchy at best. More especially since the Serapeum had already been destroyed and rebuilt some centuries earlier - and the evidence of a library being there at that time was sketchy at best.

The best evidence we have for the destruction of the library is given to us by Livas, Florus and Seneca. They assert that it was common knowledge that Julias Caesar inadvertantly destroyed a warehouse containing some 400,000 volumes which was either on the docks or nearby.  This happened when Caesar set fire to an enemy's fleet to protect himself from a desperate situation.  However, it is now known if these volumes were being made ready for shipping or if were part of one of the actual libraries of Alexandria.

[Pokey78]

Steyn ping.

Mr. Mulliner, you have been removed. Just let me know when you want back on.

[aruanan]

Excellent!

[dead]

Do you really believe that the museum's truly valuable artifacts were still in the museum when the coalition troops entered Baghdad?

They were long long gone by then.

[Poincare]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/898753/posts

Posted under a different title last week. Good that more people get a chance to read it though.

[1rudeboy]

I would imagine that the Geneva Conventions prevent "pillag[ing]" by advancing or retreating military forces. I'd love to be shown otherwise. Until then, I would say that your comment is as far off-the-mark as your legal analysis.

[headsonpikes]

"...not Florida, but Paris. Quelle surprise!"

Yes, how philistine of him to speak bluntly. Swinish, even.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks for the ping!

In any case, it appears the Western jurisdiction in which the first Iraqi artifacts have turned up is not Florida but Paris. Quelle surprise! The National Museum fell victim not to general looting but to a heist, if not an inside job, for which the general lawlessness provided cover. Am I sorry it happened? Yes, because it has given the naysayers, who were wrong about the millions of dead, humanitarian catastrophe, environmental devastation, regional conflagration, etc, one solitary surviving itsybitsy teeny-weeny twig from their petrified forest with which to whack Rumsfeld and Co.

Marvelous writing!

[irish guard]

>>>>>>>>Part of the frigging POINT of invading Iraq was so that matters of heritage -- whether economic, cultural, or personal -- would be preserved from the effects of being looted. (One of several reasons, shifting with the winds of responding to the media, but we won't get into that now.)<<<<<<<

Where was I when Bush and Powell described that as a reason for going into "frigging" Iraq? I don't remember Tony Blair mentioning that we were going to attack Iraq because we needed to save the antiquity!!!

Stop the frigging presses, you mean we weren't after weapons of mass destruction or to unseat a despicable dictator? Gosh, we need to make sure we tell the 3rd Infantry Division, the Marines, the 82nd and 101st Airborne and the air force that they were there for all the wrong reasons! I bet they never knew they were there to save the artifacts from Sumeria! (/sarcasm) Good Grief!

[xp38]

The famous stele with the code of Hammurabi resides in the Louvre. Time for another Quelle Surpise!! The British Museum has tons of ancient Babylonian stuff too. I'd like to see an accounting of what exactly has been irreplacebly lost from this heist.

[knighthawk]

Ping

[TomB]

Part of the frigging POINT of invading Iraq was so that matters of heritage -- whether economic, cultural, or personal -- would be preserved from the effects of being looted.

Could you point to where an administration official said we are going into Iraq to save their museum pieces?

[moneyrunner]

I see that others have already responded to your ersatz history and your equally fake rationale for the war.

I have been bemused by the recent descriptions of the “treasures” claimed to have previously resided in the museum in Baghdad. I have heard of the Louvre and the British Museum. I have heard of the antiquities preserved in Athens, Cairo and Rome. But until now, the treasures of Baghdad have somehow never made it into the headlines, and the Baghdad museum never made it into the Grand Tour of the treasures of antiquity.

But since the museum was looted – apparently by insiders – we are suddenly hearing about the tremendous treasures once found there. Well, forgive me for being skeptical, but I have also heard about the invincible Republican Guard, the implacable hostility of the Arab Street, the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis slaughtered in this war, the bombing of hospitals, and all the other extravagant claims made by those who opposed this war. So put me down as “undecided” about the “incredible treasures” that are “forever lost.”

And, by the way, “frigging” is rather juvenile.

[TomB]

Actually, if you take his "rationale" (using that term VERY loosely) to its logical conclusion, since Sadam and his cronies were systematically looting the museum prior to the invasion, we were justified in our actions if for no other reason than to stop the "rape of the antiquities".

I think.

[TomB]

Good day, Mark.

Are you as amazed as I am at the sudden number of art and history fans there are since the war has ended?