[Peace-discuss] Letter to the Editor

[Ricky Baldwin]

Great letter, Paul.  Thanks for posting it.

--- paul michael king <pmking at students.uiuc.edu>
wrote:
> 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)
> 
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>
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> 


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