One-Finger Salute

Ironic Killing of the Day

The Independent reports that two members of the Iraqi National Congress, led by accused bank embezzler Ahmed Chalabi, and a third person involved with Chalabi's so-called "Free Iraqi Forces" militia, were shot dead by US soldiers last Friday (18 April 2003) in Baghdad.

The soldiers were reportedly protecting a bank.

Iraq's Future? One Without a Past

Before the US war against Iraq began, President Bush delivered a speech to the ultra-right wing "think"-tank American Enterprise Institute (parts of which were later less-than-creatively recycled in a radio address to ordinary Americans). In this speech, Bush spoke of the need to protect Iraqis and their resources:

...We will provide security against those who try to spread chaos, or settle scores, or threaten the territorial integrity of Iraq. We will seek to protect Iraq's natural resources from sabotage by a dying regime, and ensure those resources are used for the benefit of the owners -- the Iraqi people... The nation of Iraq -- with its proud heritage, abundant resources and skilled and educated people -- is fully capable of moving toward democracy and living in freedom.

If anyone needed any more confirmation that Bush and his henchmen were not motivated by any kind of noble humanitarian concerns and did not seriously mean any of the public pronouncements like the fluff piece above or the constant drivel about the "liberation" of the Iraqi people, one need only consider the devastation wrought upon Iraq's priceless antiquities following the capture of Baghdad.

Under the eyes of US soldiers, who apparently had their hands full pulling down statues of Saddam Hussein, staging photo-ops of happy Iraqis welcoming their liberators, and guarding oil wells and the Ministry of Oil, a large part of the heritage of Iraq, and all of humanity, was destroyed. Gangs of looters first targeted the Iraqi National Museum, smashing, destroying, and stealing the physical evidence of thousands of years of human activity, creativity, organization, and civilization. This was not a random "smash-and-grab" operation - while there were some ordinary looters, who focused on items like computers and furniture, the theft of the most important works appears to have been planned to order, almost certainly on the behalf of collectors in the US and Europe. The next day, the National Library was hit, with historical and archival materials from the classical Islamic through the early post-Ottoman periods either looted or put to the torch. Some of the most important historical and archaeological materials relating to mankind's development have either been destroyed or are on their way to private collections - either way, they will never be available for study again.

This absolute disaster did not "just happen". It was not an unforeseen "accident". Well before the US invasion, American war planners were urged to protect Iraq's antiquities, were warned that looting might happen, and were advised to take steps to prevent it. According to the Guardian article, the American government itself listed

…16 institutions that 'merit securing as soon as possible to prevent further damage, destruction and or pilferage of records and assets'. First was the national bank, next came the museum. The Oil Ministry, which has been carefully guarded, came sixteenth on a list of 16.

The memo said 'looters should be arrested/detained', yet US troops continued to pass by looters carting off their booty, and no tanks appeared in front of these buildings for days.

Even while this devastation of mankind's past was under way, the US could have prevented it. In his articles, cited above, Fisk relates that he reported these crimes directly to the American authorities, yet they made no effort to halt them.

The devastation and theft of Iraq's antiquities and history goes beyond criminal negligence. The stolen and destroyed materials were not simple goods like furniture, television sets, or hubcaps - they were irreplaceable documents of humanity's past. The scale of this crime demands that the US administration answer a number of important questions. Why did field commanders ignore recommendations made higher up in the chain of command? Who ordered (and there must have been a very clear order at some point) these lower-ranking officers to disregard advice on sites to be protected? Who, exactly, were the masterminds behind this act of pillage? How did the thieves acquire the keys to open the vaults housing the most important archaeological pieces? Is there, perhaps, any serious, high-level American "collecting" taking place beyond the rampant "souvenir-hunting" of US soldiers in Iraq?

Other Middle Eastern archaeologists, completely ignored when it came to preventing this catastrophe in the first place, are also demanding answers. To take just one example, Winifried Orthmann released a letter recently in which he stated

…it is not enough that we express our anger and our grief... through personal communications and postings to lists. This crime against humanity, which "just happened" because of the failure of the American troops and their commanders to take serious their obligation to protect the cultural property of the country they invaded after they successfully destroyed the former government should be denounced by the scientific community acting as a group… we should insist that the US governemnt [sic] sets up a commitee [sic] to investigate this matter and to name those people in the line of command who have been responsable [sic] and did not issue the orders which would have given protection to museums, libraries and other cultural institutions. If possible, they should be prosecuted through the proper law enforcement agencies.

But the odds of this happening are slim. Despite Secretary of State Colin Powell's recent hypocritical bleating about "valuing" Iraq's archaeology and culture and "understanding" its history, there is little reason to expect that the American authorities will make any serious effort to track down the stolen antiquities or that anything will be recovered even if they do. According to McGuire Gibson, an American archaeologist, "maybe two" of the estimated 4,000 objects looted after the 1991 Gulf war have been recovered (i.e., a success rate of 0.0005%).

At best, the Bush administration displayed a complete disregard for Iraq's antiquities. More likely, though, its facilitation (whether "intentional" or not) of this destruction and pillage, its nonchalance at the vaporization of the past, and its laissez-faire attitude towards the whole matter, shown quite clearly in Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld's admonishment of the press for overemphasizing the "untidy" phase which followed the American entry into Baghdad, underscore its utter contempt for the whole concept of history. History did not matter when Bush and his cronies were preparing for war; it mattered less when they were lying to and deceiving the American and international publics on their underlying motivations; it mattered least of all when they stood aside and let the past be smashed to unintelligible bits or stolen for their colleagues-in-spirit, wealthy private collectors. It does not matter to them that the objects now gone were the documents of the development of the social system they themselves are running, that they were the record of how simpletons like Bush, hypocrites like Powell, and madmen drunk on power like Rumsfeld have been ruling humanity since before the beginning of written history.

What kind of future will the "liberated" Iraq have? According to the American vision, one "liberated" of the burden of its past. One cut off from the history that made it the center of human civilization for nearly 5,000 years. One, in the words of a colleague and friend, in which the " we can rebuild Iraq in our own image--with a populace that can't remember what was said from one day to the next."