We may have been unable to protect tablets containing missing pieces of the Gilgamesh epic. But somehow we did manage to secure the lavish homes of Saddam's hierarchy, where the cultural gems ranged from videos of old James Bond movies to the collected novels of Danielle Steel.
That's Frank Rich in the NYT today. The most telling line in the article may be this: The Washington Times published (April 21, 2003)
...a March 26 Pentagon memo to the coalition command listing, in order of importance, 16 sites that were crucial to protect in Baghdad. No. 2 on the list was the Baghdad museum. (If that link breaks, there's an excerpt posted here: look for "Pentagon memo."
The blame for this cultural disaster seems to lie clearly with the civilian commanders at the Pentagon, not with the soldiers on the ground. Far be it from me to call Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et. al. Philistines, but... (incidentally, the Philistines appear to have gotten a bad rap; this article tells us they had quite a culture themselves).
Serendipity: that second link in the quoted paragraph above comes from something called The History News Network: if you're a history buff, it has lots of interesting material, including highly opinionated blogs! As you might also expect from an outfit with that name, the Iraqi antiquity fiasco is well covered.
Posted by Linkmeister at April 27, 2003 10:30 AMSpeaking of museums and being indoors and looking at things of historical interest - my comment has nothing to do with any of these things.
I just wanted to obnoxiously point out that although snowflakes are indeed fragile, they are more commonly associated with winter and, as it will soon be May, we are well on our way into spring. And I was noticing that it looks a bit wintery in here....
*giggle*
Yikes! The Sunday decorator! (with apologies to Johnny Hart of B.C. and his Midnight Skulker).
Yes, yes...I'm thinking about it.
Posted by: Linkmeister at April 27, 2003 03:26 PMHah! I've redecorated! Vaguely! But it counts!
Posted by: batty at April 27, 2003 07:29 PM