Commentary on the destruction of the National Library of Iraq.
Barbara
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Date: Tuesday, April 15, 2003 12:10 AM -0400
From: Automatic digest processor <[log in to unmask]>
To: Recipients of caah digests <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: caah Digest - 13 Apr 2003 to 14 Apr 2003 (#2003-40)
There are 9 messages totalling 1107 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. National Library destroyed (3)
2. Operation Iraqi Freedom (2)
3. caah Digest - 11 Apr 2003 to 12 Apr 2003 (#2003-38)
4. museum analysis
5. Graduate Programs Training Students in Italian Art History (2)
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Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 07:15:32 -0400
From: Kenneth Allan <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: National Library destroyed
The United States has a lot to answer for here. A Toronto Star reporter
has written of watching US soldiers at one government site holding the
doors open for looters to enter.
--K.A.
> From a John Burns' article, NY Times:
Among other buildings afire or still smoldering in eastern Baghdad today
were the city hall, the Agriculture Ministry and ? so thoroughly burned
that heat still radiated 50 paces from its front doors ? the National
Library. Not far from the National Museum of Iraq, which was looted on
Thursday and Friday with the loss of almost all of its store of 170,000
artifacts, the library was considered another of the repositories of an
Iraqi civilization dating back at least 7,000 years.
By tonight, virtually nothing was left of the library and its tens of
thousands of old manuscripts and books, and of archives like Iraqi
newspapers tracing the country's turbulent history from the era of
Ottoman rule through to Mr. Hussein. Reading rooms and the stacks where
the collections were stored were reduced to smoking vistas of blackened
rubble.
Across the street, a lone American tank roared out of the monumental
gates of the Defense Ministry, untouched by the looters presumably
because they knew that the ministry, at least, would be under close
guard by American troops.
Almost as much as the civilian casualties from American bombs and tanks,
the destruction of the museum and the library has ignited passions
against American troops, for their failure to intervene. How far these
passions offset the widespread jubilation at the toppling of Mr. Hussein
is impossible to tell, in part because of the differing views within the
population. Along looters, many but not all of them from the
impoverished underclass, and especially from the slums of Saddam City,
the end of Mr. Hussein's government appears to have been greeted as an
absolute good.
But a different view emerges among Baghdad's professionals. Many of them
managed to elude the worst brutalities of Mr. Hussein, either because
they were members of the Baath Party, or were Sunni Muslims, or because,
as doctors, lawyers, engineers and university teachers, they made
themselves useful to the government and offered few challenges to its
survival. Among those people, the common view in recent days has been
the one expressed by protesters who gathered in the heat outside the
Palestine Hotel today, shouting abuse at the marines: that the cure has
proven worse than the disease ? that having many of the city's principal
institutions laid to waste by looters has been too high a price for
freedom.
One exponent of that view is Gailan Ramiz, a Princeton-educated
political scientist at Baghdad University, who sought out reporters at
the hotel.
Dr. Ramiz, 62, had bitter words for Mr. Hussein, but he added: "I
believe the United States has committed an act of irresponsibility with
few parallels in history, with the looting of the National Museum, the
National Library and so many of the ministries. People are saying that
the U.S. wanted this ? that it allowed all this to happen because it
wanted the symbolism of ordinary Iraqis attacking every last token of
Saddam Hussein's power."
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Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 08:10:13 -0400
From: Norman Muller <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: National Library destroyed
With the destruction first of the National Museum and now the National
Library, the U.S. and its allies have indeed won a Pyrrhic victory. This is
a catastrophe of enormous proportions, affecting all educated peoples, yet
except for the reporting of a few like John Burns of the NY Times, and
responses from some readers to that newspaper, the major news organizations
have been particularly quiet about this. Being in a cynical frame of mind
right now, isn't this to be expected given the society we live in?
Norman Muller
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Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 09:24:13 -0400
From: Alan Wallach <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Operation Iraqi Freedom
The destruction of the Iraqi National Museum and National Library does not
prove, as Norman Muller maintains, that the US war in Iraq has ended in a
Pyrrhic victory. The victory we see is precisely the victory the Bush
administration has long sought. Its war in Iraq is a war for oil and
geopolitical power. The war's human and cultural costs have never figured
in its calculations. Such criminal indifference is to be expected from an
administration that cares nothing about health care or education (its motto
should be "Leave No Millionaire Behind") and, with such figures as Lynne
Cheney lurking in the background, is reflexively hostile to cultural and
intellectual life. As federal and state governments cut support for
education and the arts, it is not difficult to see a link between the
violent destruction now going on in Baghdad and the slow-motion destruction
going on before our eyes here at home. As Janis Joplin used to sing,
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."
Alan Wallach
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Barbara Q. Prior
Head, The Clarence Ward Art Library
Oberlin College
Allen Art Building
83 North Main Street
Oberlin, OH 44074-1193
Email: [log in to unmask]
Phone: (440)775-8635
Fax: (440)775-8969
http://www.oberlin.edu/~library/artlib/
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