Was the Sack of Baghdad Intentional?

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Looters 'ransack' Baghdad museum

Saturday, April 12, 2003 Posted: 2:58 PM EDT (1858 GMT) CNN.com/World

BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) -- Looters have sacked Baghdad's antiquities museum, plundering treasures dating back thousands of years to the dawn of civilization in Mesopotamia, museum staff said on Saturday.

They blamed U.S. troops for not protecting the treasures.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/04/12/sprj.irq.int.baghdad.museum.reut/index.html

One of the first responsibilities of an occupying power when entering a city is to maintain public order and protect public and private property. The United States knew that at the end of the war they would be responsible for a major city. The Bush administration could reasonably estimate what it would need to protect in terms of important institution and public infrastructure. It also could predict with near certainty that the war with Iraq would be a relatively short. Yet it had no plans in place to secure major building and other facilities once the army occupied Baghdad. As a result the museums of Baghdad have been plunder. This is a calamitous loss as Iraq is the very taproot of our civilization and those museums contained the archaeological record how we as humans transformed ourselves from barbarous tribal societies to the complex technology driven societies that we live in. Why was this allowed to happen. Was it intentional or are they simply monumentally incompetent?

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I think that they underestimated the looting. Thing is, the war isn't over but they made PR moves to make it appear that way (to reduce war weariness) and that also sent a message to the Iraqis.

The message was that the regime is dead and they took advantage of it before the military was ready to make the transition from engaging military to engaging civilians.

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My heart bleeds hearing of plundered museums and burning libraries in Iraq. Shame on those who are doing these things and those who are responsible for protecting these institutions. That are unpayable losses and crimes against the whole mankind.

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If many of the art treasures turn up being sold to museums and private collectors in the U.S.A., will this be pure coincidence?

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It's a darn shame. If some of these treasures end up in the US, it is only because many Americans have art collections, and the money to pay for them. Unfortunately there ARE people in the US who covet fine art and antiquities, and don't care about the work's provenance.

John Webb- Are you implying that there was a conspiracy? I doubt it very much.

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I doubt that it was a conspiracy but I suspect very much that it was maligned inattention. The United State government simply did not care. They knew well in advance that they were going to be occupying Baghdad and they knew what was there that needed to be protected. But there was no plan in place to protect those sites, such as cultural andother public institutions. There should have been soldiers and tanks around those places immediately. Rather they let the mob go on a rampage and justified it as "freedom being a little messy". The thinking seems to have been that a little destruction would clearly mark the end of the old regime and clear they way for the establishing a new one. Sort of a Bastille theory. That destruction is more then simply an artistic loss (although that is calamitous enough). That museum is, or was, an archive of the data that is used to piece together the process by which we, has humans, created the world we know today. The army while occupying Baghdad allowed the destruction of the record of our own emergence as civil beings.

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Was the Sack of Baghdad Intentional?

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