After reading Teresa Nielsen
Hayden on the subject, I wanted to go into what I'd said
href="http://dichroic.diaryland.com/castblame.html"> about the looting of the
Iraqi National Museum a little more fully. (And yes, this will be another of those
wishy-washy entries.) It is a little simplistic, I suppose, to say that
only those who are doing the looting deserve the blame, but I do still
believe that the criminal deserves the blame for the crime -- far more so than the
society that allowed the criminal to function, which is the position the U.S. is
in here. The fact that we know 10-15% of the population will perform criminal acts
if they can get away with is still no excuse for those criminals. So blame the
looters, first and foremost.
But it's unforgiveably idealistic for
the rest of us not to make plans to deal with that criminal element. According to
Bartlett, Edmund Burke probably did not really say, "The only thing necessary for
the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing"; nonetheless, his ghost has been
niggling at me. I don't blame the soldiers in Iraq; there just aren't enough of
them to keep order. I do blame Rumsfeld, for seeing to it that there aren't enough
of the right sort of force. Civil unrest after the toppling of a government can
scarcely be unanticipated by those schooled in the ways of power and government.
Either he knew this would happen and didn't care enough (about either artifacts or
lives) plan for it or he's a complete idiot. And I don't think he's a complete
idiot. (GWB, maybe.)
The Iraqi people and the Arab neighbors
demonstrating in solidarity with them bear some responsibility too: they keep
saying they want to run their own country and that we should go home. A perfectly
reasonable request, but not one that is particularly compatible with expecting
American troops to protect their treasures from Iraqi looters.
Being
the product of the written word that I am, I am even more distressed at the loss
of the Iraqi library than at the loss of the museum. I mean, I'm still not over
the burning of the library at Alexandria. This library is not likely the sort of
unique repository Alexandria was, bu all big research libraries have irreplaceable
knowledge. I was relieved somewhat to hear, this morning on NPR, of Moslem groups
employing boys to save everything possible from the library. I hope they can save
some of it, at least.