[Peace-discuss] Letter to the Editor

[paul michael king]

I am filled with a profound sense of sadness after reading reports of how
Iraq's National Library, National Museum, National Archives Center and the
Baghdad Archeological Museum have been looted and ransacked in recent
days. These were the homes of Babylonian, Sumerian, Assyrian and ancient
Mesopotamia collections that contained hundreds of thousands of artifacts
that dated back more than 10,000 years.

While this senseless destruction was carried out, American tanks and
soldiers were standing guard outside of the Ministries of Oil and the
Interior. When questioned about our inaction, U.S. Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld responded smugly and succinctly: "stuff happens".

I am shaken to my core and angry beyond words. Almost all that has
transpired so far in the U.S. invasion of Iraq pales in comparison to
these events. Not because human life is less valuable than these objects,
but because we are willfully destroying the history of these people and
ourselves. We are invoking a sort of permanent cultural amnesia over them.
Why?

Joseph Schumpeter asserts that capitalism is premised on destruction - lay
waste the old, roll out the new. Without a historical identity, the hearts
and minds of the Iraqi people will certainly be co-opted by the unholy and
profane culture of western consumerism with relative ease. This cultural
lobotomy not only effects the middle east, though, but the entire world!
This is the birthplace of western civilization!

Such negligence should be a war crime. No wonder the world hates America
with such ferocity. This is truly the beginning of a very dark age -
darkness filled with the sounds of machines and bombs and death. I am
ashamed and embarrassed to be an American.

Paul King
Graduate Student
Library & Information Science
Champaign-Urbana, IL
217.373.1442

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless,
whether the mad destruction is brought under the name of totalitarianism
or the holy name of liberty and democracy?" (Gandhi)