“Iraq’s four-year looting frenzy, the allies have become the vandals”
I had posted a poem on Iraq - Halaku, when you will come to Baghdad this time; and today reading the piece by Simon Jenkins brought back that hollow feeling of irreparable loss and destruction of Iraqi civilization, ostensibly, by the ‘civilized’ world.
Jenkins writes:
Yesterday Hussaini reported to the British Museum on his struggles to protect his work in a state of anarchy. It was a heart breaking presentation. Under Saddam you were likely to be tortured and shot if you let someone steal an antiquity; in today’s Iraq you are likely to be tortured and shot if you don’t. The tragic fate of the national museum in Baghdad in April 2003 was as if federal troops had invaded New York city, sacked the police and told the criminal community that the Metropolitan was at their disposal. The local tank commander was told specifically not to protect the museum for a full two weeks after the invasion. Even the Nazis protected the Louvre.
And this is how he ends the article:
British collusion in such destruction is a scandal that will outlive any passing conflict. And we had the cheek to call the Taliban vandals.
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Read the full piece here
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Pingback by Jahane Rumi - In search of the unsearchable: “…O, my soul! where would you find your house?†» “Iraq’s four-year looting frenzy, the allies have become the vandals” — June 19, 2007 @ 4:03 pm