Well, the looted museum, the mobs ransacking a hotel which had USA guards posted and the guards doing nothing to prevent it, The buildings burning, people firing at the looters in an attempt to protect their property, looters being lynched, . . . all theses are things I have seen TV footage of with these (admiteddly myopic) eyes that Allah gave me. So, unless it was staged, it seems like pretty representative of what’s going on.
Furthermore, the Red Cross and other NGOs are telling the same tale and saying they find it impossible and unsafe to do their job there.
It does not take a genius to realize a police force would be needed and the US could have easily made plans for that and it would not have been difficult thing to do. They were just totally unprepared to fulfill their responsibility in this respect.
Admittedly, the capture and occupation of Baghdad did go much more smoothly than anticipated (and feared)… but I’d agree that there should have been more of planned peacekeeping strategy.
>> How’s that? Well I guess it shows that we have different views of responsibility.
Except that my view is the one the world community accepts and which the USA subscribed to when it signed the Geneva Convention. Your view is fine for you but it is not what the world thinks.
And if a foreign country invaded your city and mobs ransacked your house, are you telling me you would not hold the foreign country in the least responsible? You don’t believe that for a minute and neither do I.
And if the only responsibility is for those who directly do the deed, then those responsible for 9/11 all died in the act and the USA was totally out of line in invading any other country as a response.
If we had stormed into Baghdad with 100,000 troops and established instant order, many of the very same people whining over a few-days delay in getting the civil policing up and running would be whining instead of the overbearing U.S. presence and how that was going to ‘ruin the peace.’
The military perhaps could have done slightly better, if they had accurately predicted how long it would take Baghdad to fall (remember it came faster than expected), but overall they seem to be putting things right pretty quick. Yesterday, they were interviewing police, doctors, electricians, etc. (for jobs, not information).
Sorry real wars don’t work like video games, but they don’t.
Yeah, wars a messy. Except that before the war it was those of us who were against it saying this and the response of the US government was that it would not be a messy war and everything would be fine and dandy. Facts have proven otherwise.
Let’s imagine what the headlines would read if we hadn’t secured the oil fields, shall we?
Oil Fires in Iraq Greatest Ecological Disaster in History, Experts Say
Far be it from me to diminish the importance of cultural heritage, but the military must finish the heavy combat before it turns to the policing. Which, it appears, is happening more and more.
What I do not understand at all is why any Iraqi would simply destroy the artifacts. Maybe it was a mob, fighting over every scrap, and destroying more that it took in the process.
Looting Baath Party HQ, Saddam’s Love Palace, or the Ministry of Torture, those I totally understand.
Well, here’s my take… we went in and invaded a country and within two weeks had surrounded or partially surrounded the capital. Now, this was the city that was supposed to be reduced to rubble, with the military resorting to brutal street to street fighting to clear out the crack Special Republican Guard and paramilitary irregulars. There was a very real possibility of chemical weapons being used. What happened instead was that we just sorta drove into the city against light and sporadic opposition with the odd sniper and suicide bomber attack. Again, I think we were temporarily taken aback with how relatively EASY things went and it’s taken a day or two for us to shift gears and compensate, we kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. For those of you who think we should have immediately went into police mode and stopped these ‘mobs’ of angry disaffected civillians from looting, how many of those civillian looters would you have tolerated getting killed to protect these ‘treasures of humanity’. How much ill will do you think would have been generated if the US had stormed in and started cracking down on these mobs of civillians? In the end people have been overly critical of this operation from the get go. Not enough troops, not enough armor, advancing too fast, getting bogged down, bombing too much, bombing too little ect. ect. ect. I just have to laugh lately… that’s all.
Which US gov’t official said the war would “not be messy and everything would be fine and dandy”. Even in paraphrase, you’ll have to show me a cite for that one.
I didn’t say the US bears no responsibility. I would concede indirect responsibility for the looting. But let’s take your arguement to it’s logical conclusion. If the US bears direct responsibility for looting, then how about the looters? They only bear indirect responsibility? Pls explain that to me.
If NK suddenly invaded California and knocked out my local police station, and the guy down the street to that opportunity to steal my car, you damn well better believe I’ll hold the guy down the street DIRECTLY responsible for the theft. And I’m not a guy who wants the leader of my country ousted.
John, your opinion is fine but it is not the opinion of most of the world and it is not what international law says as accepted by the USA as signatories of the Geneva Convention. That is what counts and not your (or my) opinion.
Secondly, holding only those directly responsible for the acts as the only ones responsible has never been done in the USA. You create the conditions for a mishap and you will be held responsible even if someone else did it. If you incite people to loot you will be held responsible under US law even though you did not loot yourself. Your idea has never been the rule.
Those directly responsible for 9/11 died in the act but the USA invaded Afghanistan and killed and imprisoned people who were not directly responsible.
In any case, the USA is not living up to its obligations and responsibilities under the Geneva convention and that is all that counts. Your opinion or mine matter little.
One can make a reasonable case that the U.S. military would have been hard-pressed to prevent any looting, given the rapidity of the collapse of the Ba’athist regime, and the size of Baghdad (5 million people - not exactly a small village). What’s criminal is that one Humvee-load of Marines could have prevented what happened at the Iraq Museum. And our government was warned about the danger well in advance. Somebody’s got some ‘splainin’ to do.
Firstly, neither one of us knows what the opinin of “most of the world” is. Secondly, to imply that the US should’ve parachuted a bunch of marines in to guard the Iraqi museum 2 weeks into the war is simply ludicrous. Your play-by-play application of the Geneva convention is pretty simple minded. Let’s look back after 6 months and see what was done. Give those overextended troops a chance to breath before you rail against them.
i would say world opinion is reflected and expressed in the Geeva Convention. Furthermore, the USA could have waited a bit and found more cooperation with other countries and with NGOs. They have a good track record of handling aid and order issues. With international cooperation other troops from third countries would have entered and kept order. It has been done before.
And, as has been said, there are cases like the museum which could have been prevented with extreme ease. US forces had a deliberate policy of not intervening. How do you justify US troops guarding a hotel AND allowing the looting of it?
This may sound harsh, but I personally could have tolerated quite a few looters being shot to protect the museum.
As a historian, I mourn seeing even the palaces being ransacked of their beautiful furniture and decorative items, but allowing the looting of Iraq’s cultural heritage is intolerable. I think that the Iraqi people would have understood if the American troops tried to defend the museum from being destroyed. Probably, they would have just moved on to another government building if told they could not enter the museum, and shots never would have needed to be fired. The mere presence of troops would have been enough, I think, to prevent the destruction.
Instead, the entire world has been robbed of part of its heritage. It’s doubtful that many of these artifacts will ever be restored to their proper places. It’s possible that many of the gold artifacts will be melted down. Without proper conditions and conservation, some of the more fragile artifacts could crumble away.
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Yeah, it’s freakin’ hilarious that Baghdad’s gone to hell in a handbag, and that priceless treasures were smashed into oblivion.
I’m one of those who has been critical from “the get go” and if anything, recent events have made me even more so. I’m sickened by the destruction and waste. I’m sickened by the loss of life and historical artifacts. And most of all, I’m sickened by those who consider this mess to be a glowing triumph.
I don’t know the particulars of the hotel looting. If the soldiers would’ve had to shoot people to stop them looting, then I’d say they made the better choice.
I have no doubt that the US will (and is already in the process of) setting up the structure to maintain civil order. Six months from now we may argue whether they should’ve done this 2 days sooner than they did, but I think you’ll be stretching the Geneva convention to say that order must be restored IMMEDIATELY.
But you still haven’t answered a question I consider important. To what degree do you, sailor, hold the Iraqs looters responsible for their actions? In an earlier post I stated that I do consider the US actions to be INDIRECTLY responsible.
The Bushistas have been claiming that they are protecting the oil fields specifically because they are an important source of wealth for the Iraqi people. An another potential source of wealth for Iraq would be tourism. Iraq sits upon some of the oldest and most important archaeological sites in the world. Iraq is home to Sumeria, to Ur, to Babylon. It’s the Biblical site of the Garden of Eden. Civilization began in what is now Iraq. The artifacts in the museums there are utterly invaluable and irreplacable in their historical importance. All of these things can make Iraq a tourism Mecca on a par with Egypt or Israel.
The US should have known the importance and value of the museums and protected them (somehow, I doubt that GWB has any clue about the history of the region, and wouldn’t care if he did). TV sets and mattresses can be replaced, Cuneiform tablets cannot. The US has a legal and moral obligation to safeguard the livelihood and wealth of the Iraqi people. The archaeological heritage of Iraq is part of that wealth, and it’s a source of potential wealth which is not as finite as oil. It’s disgraceful that US troops sat around with their thumbs up their asses and allowed the museum to be looted…disgraceful.
Sadly, I guess this is not too surprising… Every time a dicatatorship is deposed there are a few weeks of looting. History suggests a good portion of the artifacts will be recovered.
At least the militant anti-US crowd has not jumped on this as a US failure, yet. Well, I don’t think they will… The history of liberated peoples is too well-written.
Don’t try to turn things around. Nowhere have I said that the looters bear no responsibility. In fact I have implied they are the ones directly responsible
but that does not change the fact that the actions of the US created the conditions which enabled them to do it.