The Theft of History

Amy Smith thinks this BuzzFlash article is interesting:

When a People are Deprived of Their History, It is Much Easier to Write a New One for Them. Isn't It?

This devastation of loss to mankind merited barely a word of acknowledgment in the daily Don Rumsfeld disinformation briefings. Instead, he ridiculed coverage of the destruction by dismissively claiming that the television stations were showing the same young man carrying the same vase over and over again.

After all, erasing history -- Iraqi or American -- is what the Bush administration does day in and day out. So what better way to conquer a nation than by allowing its history to be destroyed by looters?

For the Bush Cartel, their truth and lies barely last through the next news hour, before their stories and excuses evolve to meet changing needs. Due to the lack of any meaningful Democratic opposition, they have become emboldened with lying and are almost giddy with weaving increasingly transparent tales of deception.

We have a media machine that rewrites history every news cycle in America. We have a media machine that increasingly relies on the manipulation of symbol and image over meaning, history and experience.

In Iraq, a heinous crime was committed when antiquities and books, our collective heritage as a people of the earth, was destroyed in a few hours of wanton looting, while the Bush Cartel protected the ministry building overseeing oil production in Iraq. It was a win-win situation for the Bush administration. The oil concession for American and British companies was seized and protected. The history of Iraq's rich culture was destroyed.

When a people are deprived of their history, it is much easier to write a new one for them. Isn't it?


Seeing the Forest blogs about several reports that suggest the looting was planned and coordinated with Bush officials. Someone knew to take glass cutters not found in Iraq and had keys to vaults.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal manages to point the finger of suspicion at Saddam.and his family.

"I would personally suggest it was done by Saddam's circle, and my prime suspect would by Uday," says Con Coughlin, author of "Saddam: King of Terror," in an interview. "Saddam and his family are basically cultural vandals. When he left Kuwait he trashed the place. So it makes sense that when he leaves Iraq he took the most valuable items." Saddam's family is essentially "a Mafia family, and Barzan [Saddam's half-brother], the guy arrested Thursday, was basically the bagman."

Saddam had been busy looting the museum long before the war began. A decade ago, Iraq Opposition Radio alleged that "several antiquity collections have found their way outside Iraq and been sold for the benefit of Saddam's family and his cronies." And in October the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag reported that Saddam had started moving--to a remote town in northwestern Iraq--several truckloads of "gold bars and artworks from museums in Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul."

Or, if not Saddam, it was patriotic acts by the Iraqi people: Iraqis laid waste to the museum in Baghdad because it had become the symbol of a hated regime. And little wonder. Saddam stole his country's treasures, hauling off truckloads for his enrichment. But he also misappropriated Iraq's history by making it a tool of his personality cult.

In time some of those objects may find their way back to Baghdad. But with Saddam now gone, their past is once again their own.