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U.S. Invasion Destroys World's Greatest Collection of Ancient Cultural Treasures

Of course, the real tragedy of the war is the masses of its human casualties. Also, the destruction of buildings and property belonging to the government, to businesses, and to regular people insure that the suffering will continue. It almost seems petty to lament the loss of museum objects, at least at the present time. However, for the rest of human existence, America's war mongerers will be the scorn of anyone with an interest in the history of civilization, for America's war has caused the destruction of the greatest treasures from the world's earliest civilization.

Iraq, you see, was the cradle of civilization. It was the fertile cresent, where settled agricultural communities first formed towns. It was the home of the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and Babylon. The treasures of these civilizations -- ceramic vases, gold sculptures, stone carvings, etc. -- were housed in Baghdad's museums and to a much lesser extent in its palaces. The U.S. military knew where the ancient relics were because UNESCO, the United Nations cultural agency, told them exactly where they were located. While the United States bombed the palaces with impunity, it at least spared the museums.

As the Iraqi military collapsed under the force of the U.S. blitzkreig, American and British forces promptly secured Iraqi oil fields. However, they did not provide security for Iraqi cities, and looting broke out wherever Saddam Hussein's army was defeated. It was a pattern that was well established in Basra and other cities in the south well before Baghdad was invaded. It is probably too much to ask the young men and women of the invading armies (many of whom are still teenagers) to be able to act as police in a land they know nothing about and where they speak not a single word of the local language. However, even if they could not provide law and order, they at least could have taken up positions to protect the museums which house the irreplaceable common heritage of humanity just as they protect oil wells. But the invading armies and their political leaders mode the decision not to.

The U.S. administration and media decried the destruction by the Taliban of a centuries old Buddha carved into a mountain side in Afghanistan. Everyone recognizes the senselessness of Napoleon's army shooting off the nose of the Great Sphinx. And humanity as a whole suffered a great loss when the ancient Library of Alexandria was burned down. What the United States did to Iraq's ancient cultural treasures was no less senseless, malevalant, and permanent.

The Bush "regime" spouts that this war was motivated not by oil but by the desire to liberate Iraq. However, invading troops stand guard outside oil fields but sit by idly as regular Iraqis, who have experienced weeks of bombing and deprivation of food and water, now are subjected to lawlessness and looting by their desperado compatriots. Doesn't this expose the cynicism of the name "Operation Iraqi Freedom"? It must be emphasized that four weeks after the invasion started, the United States and Britain have caused only destruction while building absolutely nothing. In the process, they destroyed a despotic government, but have replaced it with something worse: anarchy. Maybe someday, after Iraq passes through a period of occupation and colonialism, an electoral democracy will emerge. Of course, maybe it would have emerged without a war just as electoral democracy took root in Eastern Europe and South America and East Asia without war. And maybe Iraq will just remain under an authoritarian puppet government no better than Saddam's. Whatever improvement might occur, it seems unlikely that it will be worth the death and destruction, pain and dismemberment, widdowing and orphaning that Iraq has been forced to suffer. Not to mention the loss of the cultural achievements of the oldest human civilization.

Titus North
Editor-in-chief, Wombat News Center

April 15, 2003