Chalmers Johnson: Looking Back at Five Years of Bush's Wreckage in Iraq

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



Looking Back at Five Years of Bush's Wreckage in Iraq

By Chalmers Johnson, Tomdispatch.com. Posted August 26, 2008.

Bush's supporters see the global war on terrorism as a "clash of civilizations" -- yet the civilization we are destroying in Iraq is part of our own.




On April 11, 12, 13, and 14, 2003, the United States Army and United States Marine Corps disgraced themselves and the country they represent in Baghdad, Iraq's capital city. Having invaded Iraq and accepted the status of a military occupying power, they sat in their tanks and Humvees, watching as unarmed civilians looted the Iraqi National Museum and burned down the Iraqi National Library and Archives as well as the Library of Korans of the Ministry of Religious Endowments. Their behavior was in violation of their orders, international law, and the civilized values of the United States. Far from apologizing for these atrocities or attempting to make amends, the United States government has in the past five years added insult to injury.

Donald Rumsfeld, then secretary of defense and the official responsible for the actions of the troops, repeatedly attempted to trivialize what had occurred with inane public statements like "democracy is messy" and "stuff happens."

On December 2, 2004, President Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, to General Tommy Franks, the overall military commander in Iraq at that time, for his meritorious service to the country. (He gave the same award to L. Paul Bremer III, the highest ranking civilian official in Iraq, and to George Tenet, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, which had provided false information about Saddam Hussein and Iraq to Congress and the people.)

In the five years since the initial looting and pillaging of the Iraqi capital, thieves have stolen at least 32,000 items from some 12,000 archaeological sites across Iraq with no interference whatsoever from the occupying power. No funds have been appropriated by the American or Iraqi governments to protect the most valuable and vulnerable historical sites on Earth, even though experience has shown that just a daily helicopter overflight usually scares off looters. In 2006, the World Monuments Fund took the unprecedented step of putting the entire country of Iraq on its list of the most endangered sites. All of this occurred on George W. Bush's watch and impugned any moral authority he might have claimed. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/96372/looking_back_at_five_years_of_bush%27s_wreckage_in_iraq/

[calimary]

1. Man... this hurts.

I was an art major in college. Lots of art history. MUCH of it from there. And it's gone.

THANK YOU, george fucker bush. You are a criminal of EPIC proportions.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. Yes, and it doesn't help that the average American is totally ignorant of world history and culture

I read a story in the Japanese press shortly after the invasion about a Japanese reporter who was embedded with some troops. As they were driving along a highway, he saw a bilingual sign (English and Arabic) showing where to turn off to see the ruins of Babylon.

He said something like, "We're right near the ruins of Babylon."

The response of the soldiers who were with him?

"What's Babylon?"

[tanyev]

3. The real irony is that all the Bible thumpers who think this war is such a grand idea

and that every word of the Bible is literally true should be more offended than anyone. How many of them realize that significant chunks of the Old Testament took place in what is now Iraq? Seems like they'd have a rabid interest in protecting the museums and archaeological sites.

[bobthedrummer]

4. kick

[MasonJar]

5. Being a citizen of the country which is responsible for the unnecessary

destruction of some of history's most important art, literature, monuments, documents and culture is beyond description in mere words. Are we, the people, so totally incapable of understanding that America is not always right and is in fact more often wrong than right in its approach to the rest of the world, its people and its planet? As a people, we cheered when the bombs fell as if it were a Fourth of July, instead of fearing for the innocent lives being sacrificed on the altar of hegemony and instead of deploring the massacre of civilizations which shaped our own past and present. Our braindead administration was formally and carefully warned on at least three occasions at the White House by art curators of the monetary and historical value of the antiquities in Iraq. The numbskulls chose purposefully to ignore the advice and admonitions of these experts. The conundrum is why? They secured the oil ministry so we know they had the means. WHY? There is no answer which makes any sense except that they are ignorant beyond comprehension and so self-centered and self-satisfied that what is significant to present and future generations has no merit in their eyes because it does not interest them. And the worst is that we did not rise up in mass to protest the audacity and atrocity of these pieces of human detrius, who pose as our leaders.