Slayer:
I don’t see that it makes a difference whether it was looters or art thieves. The fact is there was a power vacuum, and some people took advantage of it. The US knew in advance about the value of the museum and the probability of theft/looting. The US set priorities to guard other things. I’m sure we’ll see this whole blame issue played out in media for some time to come.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/2955421.stm
It seems that only a part of the looters were opportunists. Some of them may have been planning on this long before the fall of Bagdad.
Regardless of the value of the artifacts, such things have never been the most important thing to military minds. Also, i wondered about the timing. The city fell so fast and the looting took place so fast that the military may simply not have had the time and opportunity to do something. Changes in orders do take time. When planners are, well, planning on changing plans, as they did every day in the Recent Unpleasantness, they can do so very quickly. Caught off guard, or confronted with a completely unanticipated event, particularly when there are much more pressing matter from their POV. While looting is not unknown in such circumstances, very little in the US experience corresponds to the unprecedented swiftness of victory and the swiftness of the looting.
I must also criticize those who suggested in the Pit thread (where I avoid posting) that a few marines staioned would have been enough to rpevent looting. This is true in and of itself, but I find it likely that the Marines were not, at that time, ready to go out in such small forces. Plus, they undoubtably had to be ready for combat or to fight guerilla actions. They would not have wanted to split any small forces off to guard what must have seemed to them to be a very pointless goal.
The difference would be the information that these theives had to pull of this robbery and make it look like looting. Is the US military responsible for Baath party members spiriting away millions of dollars from govt coffers to make good their escape? Would you hold an invading army responsible for maintaining law and order if the war was was used as a cover to commit crimes? Ordinary looting perpetrated by ordinary citizens are done at an emotional level. They wouldnt be planned meticulously from beginning to end and therefore recovery would be inevitable. These antiquities robbers have escape routes, smuggling plans, black market buyers, internet sellers, experts to descrimanate the valueable from the priceless. No matter what the plans of the military were to safeguard these treasures, I would submit that the US troops wouldve been a day late no matter what they decided to do.
The Colation invasion force, and more precisely, the US division of that force:
“General Tommy Franks, the overall commander of all US and British forces in Iraq, issued an order to unit commanders that specifically prohibited the use of force to prevent looting. This instruction was only modified after several days because of mounting protests by Iraqi citizens over the destruction of their social infrastructure.”
"Sweden’s largest newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, published an interview April 11 with a Swedish researcher of Middle Eastern ancestry who had gone to Iraq to serve as a human shield. Khaled Bayoumi told the newspaper, “I happened to be right there just as the American troops encouraged people to begin the plundering.”
He described how US soldiers shot security guards at a local government building on Haifa Avenue on the west bank of the Tigris, and then “blasted apart the doors to the building.” Next, according to Bayoumi, “from the tanks came eager calls in Arabic encouraging people to come close to them.”
At first, he said, residents were hesitant to come out of their homes because anyone who had tried to cross the street in the morning had been shot. “Arab interpreters in the tanks told the people to go and take what they wanted in the building,” Bayoumi continued. “The word spread quickly and the building was ransacked. I was standing only 300 yards from there when the guards were murdered. Afterwards the tank crushed the entrance to the Justice Department, which was in a neighboring building, and the plundering continued there.
“I stood in a large crowd and watched this together with them. They did not partake in the plundering but dared not to interfere. Many had tears of shame in their eyes. The next morning the plundering spread to the Modern Museum, which lies a quarter mile farther north. There were also two crowds there, one that plundered and one that watched with disgust.”"
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/apr2003/iraq-a15_prn.shtml
"Amid growing resentment among ordinary Iraqis, American troops stood by yesterday and watched roaming gangs of looters continue their wholesale destruction of Baghdad as civil violence escalated across the city. "
"Baghdad was bursting with anti-American feeling yesterday as residents saw their city being stripped by its own citizens. US forces rarely intervened and in some cases even waved treasure-laden men through checkpoints.
The continuing chaos came despite claims yesterday by US and British politicians that reports of it have been exaggerated by the media. Ordinary Iraqis did not appear to agree with their analysis. Looting appeared to have been encouraged by the decision of US forces to reopen two strategic bridges over the Tigris, giving gangs access to new territory in the parliamentary district which had so far survived destruction. "
http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4647298,00.html
I’m sure this board will ignore this post, as it has done any other post that touches upon the fallability of the USA.
If it’s chrystal clear the US is in the wrong, most people on this board turn a blind eye, and let a thread die.
Hardly. Because these people counted precisely on the lack of public order. It is up to you to show that armed guards in front of the museum would not have discouraged the thefts.
Not to mention that while some of the damage came from organized thefts, that is by far not the case for all of them.
In any case, the thefts and the looting are a phenomenon that was solely possible due to the lack of enforcement of order. While it may be true that the US troops are not trained in doing such tasks, that in no way mitigates US responsibility. Under the Geneva Convention, it was the duty of the US as the occupying power to ensure order. The fact that the US does not train its troops to do so is its own failure.
Yes, the USA is responsible for the consequences (good and bad) of the war it started. You are responsible for the consequences of your actions. What is so hard to understand about that? Not to mention that the government of the USA had been warned and advised about this.
and yes, once again when the US of A has proven to be in the wrong, a thread dies an untimely death.