Sorry, that last was in response to your next-to-last post.
As for the rest, did you miss the bit where I (and DtC, who I usually don’t agree with, but do this time) stated our opinion that a few armed Marines posted at the museum would likely have prevented anyone from trying to loot it in the first place? I seriously doubt that a ragged group of Iraqi citizens, who were too afraid to riot in the presence of Saddam’s police are going to do so in the presence of the guys who soundly kicked his ass and ran him out of his palace.
Yeah, you’re right. the Americans should hunt the looters down, drag them into a public square and slowly torture them to death before their families.
If artifacts were destroyed beyond repair, that is surely the fault of the asshole who went to the museum to do the smashing. In the meantime, the Americans can contribute considerable wealth and expertise to the matter of restoration.
This whole “I blame you because you should have done something” stuff only plays if a specific responsibility was abandoned. 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.
Recognizing the value of the Baghdad Museum (and taking steps to protect it) is an act that can only come from someone who understands and appeciates the value of knowledge and history and culture.
George W. Bush, on the other hand, is the C-average President. 'nuff said.
You don’t know that and I don’t know that and even the Marines posted to such a detail wouldn’t know that. By definition, a riot is uncontrolled and in earlier encounters with large angry civilian crowds, the Americans chose (wisely) to withdraw rather than risk ending up in a firefight in which civilians would get killed. So, how many looters would have to be shot before the rest withdrew? And if a child was hit (because there were children involved in the looting, according to the cited article) would that be okay, too?
You are really starting to sound like Brutus’s alter-ego.
What exactly don’t you blame GWB for? If a soldier shot a looter or a rioter, I think you’d be up in arms, blaming GWB for that and calling for his head. As would the rest of the freaking world. I oppose the war, but I certainly don’t want the troops plugging civilians for vandalism.
Also, I think you are overestimating the amount of tourism dollars Iraq could expect (even with the museums intact) and seriously underestimating the oil dollars they can expect.
I’d say the oil is the mot important. For one thing, no ecosystem has ever been destroyed because someone set fire to a museum. More importantly, oil is a non-renewable, finite resource. There’s only so much we can pump out of the ground before we run out. Culture, on the other hand, is infinitly renewable. We can make more culture out of anything. We literally eat and breath it. The one thing the human race will never lack for is culture. You want more cuniform tablets? I know how to run a mill: I can run you off a stack of twenty in a few hours. They aren’t five thousand year old tablets, you say? They will be sooner or later. If there’s one thing the human race will never run out of, it’s culture.
Lastly, let us not underestimate the cultural contributions of refined oil. For example, without oil, there’d be no monster truck rallies. And then where would civilization be?
Bryan, I’m rapidly losing interest in defending a position I didn’t choose. All I’m saying is that the US and coalition forces are not blameless in this. They’re certainly not the only ones responsible (not 95%—here the Cynical One and I differ), but they do bear some responsibility.
Anyhoo, I’m going to bed now. I’ll check back tomorrow.
Nah, I blame the rioters, at least until you or anyone else points out what kind of “protection” the Americans could have extended to the museum that wouldn’t have put themselves and determined Iraqi looters at risk.
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. So, how many human lives is a cuneform worth, these days? While admittedly it’s a strawman to say the Americans should seek violent retribution on the looters, it is not a straw-man to ask how many dead Iraqis would have been acceptable in protecting these artifacts. And had the Americans gunned down even one Iraqi while protecting a museum, surely a thread damning them would have been opened, explaining how evil that act was.
Fuck the rioters, and fuck the OP for saying “fuck the Americans.”
While I agree that this is a tragedy of Alexandrian Library proportions, I think people should really be more immediately concerned about why the US army isn’t guarding the children’s hospital where the poor fucking doctors are spending 50% of their time tending to patients (with no anaesthetics or antibiotics) and the other 50% of their time standing outside with rifles, shooting down mobs of looters who want to take the fucking life support systems away.
Couldn’t agree more. Let’s not forget when faced with a picture of a crushed Girl is Palestine the fuckwit came out with this gem
Prick :mad:
Anyhoo the US and UK forces have to legally protect people and property. It seems that they are starting to move on this but only after some of the horses have all ready bolted. Yet another indication that this was a rushed war that was designed by the Pentagon and without due thought for the consequences.
I stand by that statement. When a stupid little idiot stands before a bulldozer, what should they expect to happen? Squish, that’s what they should expect. And in this case, got.
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.
