# Fifty Centuries of Human History... **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 15, 2003, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fifty-centuries-of-human-history/168771 "2003-04-15T00:43:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2003, 10:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fifty-centuries-of-human-history/168771/81 "2003-04-15T10:25:07Z")
So…any bets on how long until someone from the US forces over there is busted trying to fence Iraqi historical artifacts on eBay or whatever? ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2003, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fifty-centuries-of-human-history/168771/82 "2003-04-15T10:26:05Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Brutus \* > \*\*People stealing national treasures = Shoot them! > > People intentionally standing in front of bulldozers = Precious little angels! > Some of you people make zero sense. \*\* Both cases are about people standing in front of precious things to defend them. The hope would be that they’d be discouraged from destruction, whether IDF bulldozer drivers or mobs of Iraqi looters. It takes a lot of courage to do that unarmed. She paid a high price for her bravery. And you’re a wanker of the highest order. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Kumquat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/4491bb/32.png) [@Gary\_Kumquat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Kumquat)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2003, 10:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fifty-centuries-of-human-history/168771/83 "2003-04-15T10:30:34Z")
Why is it idiots always try to justify their positions with a binary logic strawman? Statement 3) People stealing national treasure = Won’t try it if their’s a tank parked outside the museum. Statement 4) People intentionally standing in front of bulldozers != Desrver to be crushed to death. Statement 5) Shitheads with the empathy of a fucking turd really are a repugnant species. ---
**Author:** ![Brutus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Brutus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brutus)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2003, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fifty-centuries-of-human-history/168771/84 "2003-04-15T10:36:08Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by jjimm \* > \*\*… It takes a lot of courage to do that unarmed. She paid a high price for her bravery. \*\* You obviously meant to say, “…She paid a high price for her stupidity.” Her death was as suprising as being hit by a car while playing hop-scotch on the freeway. And to think, she is the very image of [compassion and peace.](http://www.honestreporting.com/graphics/articles/corrie.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2003, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fifty-centuries-of-human-history/168771/85 "2003-04-15T10:38:19Z")
W/ever ---
**Author:** ![FisherQueen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/58f4c7/32.png) [@FisherQueen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FisherQueen)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2003, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fifty-centuries-of-human-history/168771/86 "2003-04-15T10:38:47Z")
The loss of the museum and the library in Baghdad is an unspeakable tragedy. The armed forces who destroyed the law and order of Iraq, and thus made themselves responsible for the place until another government is set up, do bear the responsibility for it, and their leaders will have to be held accountable. They will have to demonstrate the method they used for determining which sites were protected, and explain why they chose not to protect this one. Was it because they believed that Iraqis would try to loot government buildings but would not ransack their own national treasures, and so didn’t see these as a target? I could understand that reasoning, and then chalk it up to a tragic error in judgement. Was it because they were only protecting places whose destruction would hurt them immediately, and ignoring those vital to the Iraqi people themselves? If so, then they need to be penalized for that decision quite seriously. What has been lost here was of inestimable value, both for the cultural worth of the artifacts of the beginnings of civilization, and for the potential for historical tourism which truly could have helped Iraq rebuild. And to those who are saying that a bunch of old stuff isn’t worth lives, I don’t want to be at all melodramatic, but, yes, if I’d known that it wasn’t being protected (silly me for assuming it was already being protected by the American military), I would have been not only willing but honored to die protecting it. ---
**Author:** ![yojimbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yojimbo/32/232_2.png) [@yojimbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yojimbo)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2003, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fifty-centuries-of-human-history/168771/87 "2003-04-15T10:45:19Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Libertarian \* > When you find yourself as an armed agent in a foreign land where you do not speak the language, where people who love you are kissing your hand while people who hate your are strapping explosives under their armpits, where snipers are shooting at you from the rooftops of hotels, where children are asking you for candy, where old women are begging you to come with them to stop robbers from pillaging their homes, where doctors are asking whether you have any extra bandages, where news people are shoving microphones in your face and pointing cameras at you, where you have a wife or husband or children back home who fret over every moment of their own existence, where people are trying to find relatives whom Saddam’s Gestapo had kidnapped years before… > > when this is your circumstance, you do not deserve to be characterized as standing around with your fucking thumb up your ass. You also might expect that the most powerful country in the world would have been able to pre-empt some of these issues(it’s not as if war just came about out of nowhere) by planning contingencies in advance and not fire fighting as the seem to be doing now. Oh and boys and girls there’s a perfectly good thread about [Brutus](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=170640)😉 ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2003, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fifty-centuries-of-human-history/168771/88 "2003-04-15T11:12:07Z")
> [@](#): > > You also might expect that the most powerful country in the world would have been able to pre-empt some of these issues(it’s not as if war just came about out of nowhere) by planning contingencies in advance and not fire fighting as the seem to be doing now. Certainly. But unfortunately, Miss Cleo is retired and the coalition was not privvy to Saddam’s plans. What happened is called “catastrophic success”. Regarding the oil fields, there were two compelling reasons to secure them: (1) they are practically the totality of Iraq’s wealth and are crucial to its future now that they will not be pillaged by Saddam, and (2) Saddam’s destruction of oil fields in the Gulf War resulted in an ecological distaster that took years for the Gulf region to recover from. ---
**Author:** ![Catamount](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/catamount/32/2840_2.png) [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2003, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fifty-centuries-of-human-history/168771/89 "2003-04-15T11:13:32Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Lissa \* > \*\*Call me harsh, but it wouldn’t have bothered me to lose one life in order to protect those artifacts, even if it were my own. > > I agree, the looters were wrong, but we should have been prepared to deal with this. \*\* My thoughts exactly. The military allowed this looting to go on because…? What, did they think they were in an episode of _The Simpsons_? I hope the museum is able to get these artifacts back quickly, buy, borrow, or however they’re able to do it. The longer they’re gone, the harder it’ll be to find them again. ---
**Author:** ![Emilio\_Lizardo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Emilio\_Lizardo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Emilio_Lizardo)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2003, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fifty-centuries-of-human-history/168771/90 "2003-04-15T11:25:41Z")
> [@](#): > > The American military was tasked to remove Saddam with a minimum of civilian casualties. They did so. If some Iraqis are determined to fuck things up, that’s hardly the Americans’ fault. You can find a lot more detail in **Sailor’s** posts in [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=176998) but under the Geneva Convention occupying powers are required to maintain law and order and protect places like museums. You can’t just turn things on their heads and say “sorry, not my job to prevent looting.” ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2003, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fifty-centuries-of-human-history/168771/91 "2003-04-15T11:27:06Z")
Should armed cops and security not protect, say, the Smithsonian Institute, then? If an armed robber were running away with the Mona Lisa tucked under his arm, should the police not intervene? ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2003, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fifty-centuries-of-human-history/168771/92 "2003-04-15T13:02:27Z")
> [@](#): > > Should armed cops and security not protect, say, the Smithsonian Institute, then? If an armed robber were running away with the Mona Lisa tucked under his arm, should the police not intervene? That depends. If the Smithsonian’s neighborhood is populated by foreign terrorists hellbent on blowing themselves up while the police are four miles away fighting for their lives against snipers and rogue remnants of a Gestapo force, I can understand why they might be a wee bit preoccupied. ---
**Author:** ![yojimbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yojimbo/32/232_2.png) [@yojimbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yojimbo)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2003, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fifty-centuries-of-human-history/168771/93 "2003-04-15T13:14:58Z")
**Libertarian** if they don’t have the men to cover the remaining fighting they need to bring in more. If it costs more it costs more. The decision was made to fight this bullshit war and now the US and it’s allies **have** to protect the property and people until there is a infrastructure for them to do it themselves. If that means more soldiers and civilians getting killed or injured then so be it as it’s impossible to go back in time and change the fact of this war. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2003, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fifty-centuries-of-human-history/168771/94 "2003-04-15T14:05:54Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Libertarian \* > \*\*With all due respect to my friend Diogenes, and with a profound understanding of the passion behind all the viewpoints expressed here, I have to say that there have indeed been people during this conflict who have stood there with their fucking thumbs up their asses > > but > > among them most definitely were not the soldiers who, in my opinion, are displaying amazing skill and bravery in their meticulous handling of their duty. > > When you find yourself as an armed agent in a foreign land where you do not speak the language, where people who love you are kissing your hand while people who hate your are strapping explosives under their armpits, where snipers are shooting at you from the rooftops of hotels, where children are asking you for candy, where old women are begging you to come with them to stop robbers from pillaging their homes, where doctors are asking whether you have any extra bandages, where news people are shoving microphones in your face and pointing cameras at you, where you have a wife or husband or children back home who fret over every moment of their own existence, where people are trying to find relatives whom Saddam’s Gestapo had kidnapped years before… > > when this is your circumstance, you do not deserve to be characterized as standing around with your fucking thumb up your ass. > > Oh, and Brutus: you are a moron. \*\* I’m not blaming the troops on the ground (despite my sarcastic comments about them lounging around the palace). In my mind this is a failure of planning and organization. Our civilian and military leadership should have a contingincy plan already in place in case of rioting, and they should have designated specific sites for protection. Why were we guarding the building of the oil ministry? Not one thing in that building was as valuable as anything in the Baghdad museum. That choice alone, the choice to protect a beaurocratic building instead of one of the world’s most important archaeological repositories, shows ineptitude and venality on the part of this administration. That museum should have been secured the first day. ---
**Author:** ![Orual](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/779978/32.png) [@Orual](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orual)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2003, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fifty-centuries-of-human-history/168771/95 "2003-04-15T14:45:40Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Bryan Ekers \* > \*\*It’s ridiculously easy to say “you should have done something!” and somewhat less so to explain what could have been done and how the end result would have been better. > … > Fuck the rioters, and fuck the OP for saying “fuck the Americans.” \*\* Alright, I take back the “fuck the Americans”. I never intended for it to sound as if I blamed the soldiers as much as I blame the looters. I don’t. I think something could have been done, but I am not a military person and I don’t know if their training is appropriate to handle this kind of situation. But is one only allowed to be angry about an event if he has a step-by-step plan of how it could have been prevented? What pisses me off is that it seems like we just let it happen. We occupy the city and then sit back and watch as all this looting and burning goes on. If we take over aren’t we responsible for watching over these places? Aren’t _we_ supposed to be in charge now (for the time being)? And what saddens me most is not the lost of the shiny trinkets that were taken, but the loss of the probably worthless-looking tablets that were shattered and crushed. Because they weren’t all translated yet. We _hadn’t_ learned everything we could have from them. And now we never will. To me, it seems like a great loss. ---
**Author:** ![Lissa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2003, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fifty-centuries-of-human-history/168771/96 "2003-04-15T15:20:13Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally posted by Lissa > Forgive me, artifacts do not further civilization, but your family members somehow do? > > * * * > > Holy shit Lissa, I can’t believe you said that. > > His family members are part of civilization. The artifacts are merely records of civilization. I certainly don’t like the fact that artifacts are being destroyed, but let’s keep some perspective here. YES his family members, and all of our family members, and all of us, further civilization. We ARE civilization, for pete’s sake! > > Are you truly prepared to sell out part of the present civilization for a part of the record of a past one? I found his stance that artifacts are unimportant to be so ridiculous I had to respond with something equally ridiculous. For the record though, I would have regretted the loss of any troops in protecting these artifacts, but I would have fully supported the action because of its importance. (Hell, I wanted to go after the Taliban myself when they blew up the Buddhas long before September 11th.) ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2003, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fifty-centuries-of-human-history/168771/97 "2003-04-15T15:29:10Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Terrifel \* > \*\*So…any bets on how long until someone from the US forces over there is busted trying to fence Iraqi historical artifacts on eBay or whatever? \*\* That could happen, but probably _isn’t_ going to happen. CNN interviewed the curators of the museum and they said that whomever looted the place knew what they were doing. Unmarked replicas weren’t touched, while the most valuable objects were spirited away. The curators also said that _before_ the war, they’d asked UNESCO for their help in ensuring that the artifacts were protected, but never got any response. ---
**Author:** ![kingpengvin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9dc877/32.png) [@kingpengvin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kingpengvin)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2003, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fifty-centuries-of-human-history/168771/98 "2003-04-15T16:00:55Z")
For those who don’t believe this is no big loss. Imagine if the Declaration of independence was used as kindling to start a fire, or the Magna Carta or even the Mona Lisa. It’s just stuff. Wold you be pissed if The face on the Lincoln Memorial was smashed? What if someone pilfered the crown jewels and destroyed the objects they were set in? They are just stuff, old stuff, what does it matter? Well they do matter, people put importance to objects because they represent a connection to their past that can not be easily replaced. I’m disgusted that these things were destroyed but not surprised. Folks like Brutus et al show that some people don’t give a flying fuck about anything they personally don’t find any value in. (Reminds me of the Taliban’s destruction of the giant Buddahs) ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2003, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fifty-centuries-of-human-history/168771/99 "2003-04-15T16:08:37Z")
Well, word has it some of the folks are starting to give the stuff [back](http://www.bayarea.com/mld/cctimes/news/5636572.htm). > [@](#): > > Some people are surrendering the booty they took in the Dura district of Baghdad, perhaps in response to a rumored edict by a Muslim cleric forbidding Iraqi wives from having sex with looter husbands. ---
**Author:** ![Ferrous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Ferrous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferrous)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2003, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fifty-centuries-of-human-history/168771/100 "2003-04-15T17:03:03Z")
Just want to say I fully agree with **Libertarian**. I don’t blame the soldiers for this. I hope my earlier remarks did not seem to imply that I do. But I _do_ blame their leaders. Bush, Rumsfeld, and the various generals and chiefs of staff. They should have been prepared for this. (And save the Miss Cleo remarks. This was a fully forseeable event.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fifty-centuries-of-human-history/168771.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fifty-centuries-of-human-history/168771.md?page=6)