Obfuscation

As I was standing at a bus stop today, I noticed this story on the front page of the Seattle Times:

Majority of antiquities feared lost found at Iraq museum

By Christine Spolar
Chicago Tribune

BAGHDAD — The vast majority of the Iraqi trove of antiquities feared stolen or broken has been found inside the National Museum in Baghdad, according to American investigators who compiled an inventory of the ransacked galleries over the weekend.

I was thrilled. The looting of the National Museum and burning of the National Library were senselessly obscene acts, and while one can hardly compare a loss of things to a loss of lives, or an Iraqi boy's loss of limbs graphically and horrifically described, it is still not insignificant. The cultural destruction wasn't even a malicious act; it wasn't collateral damage, or a regrettable necessity, or in any way remotely justified by any larger military necessity. It was a display of supreme indifference. If one US tank had agreed to move about 60 meters, or a few American soldiers had been stationed to prevent looting, it would never have happened. The US forces just didn't care enough to make the effort.

Imagine, then, my delight! Having forgotten to synchronise my Palm Pilot this morning, I couldn't search for more information until returning here to the Halls of HogBlog, where I pulled up the story. And then I noticed something very, very unsettling:

Thirty-eight significant pieces, not tens of thousands, are now believed to be missing. Among them is a single display of Babylonian cuneiform tablets that accounts for nine missing items.

The single most valuable missing piece is the Vase of Warka, a white limestone bowl dating from 3000 B.C.

...

Investigators broke through hastily constructed cinder-block barricades Saturday to search five large storage rooms in the museum's basement. Only one of the rooms had been broken into, and even there hundreds of cardboard storage boxes were intact. About 90 plastic boxes, containing perhaps 5,000 less-valuable items, were missing.

...

Investigators are concluding that little damage occurred to antiquities at the museum. They have counted 22 damaged items, including 11 clay pots on display in corridors. Most of those damaged artifacts are restored pieces and can be restored again, museum officials told investigators.

...After reading which, I came to a much less heartening conclusion: it's propaganda. Which is not to say it isn't true, insofar as its figures are concerned. Googling, I find the story popping up in quite a few papers around the US. All quoting the same figures, with are much better than I'd feared at first. All, however, with headlines and spins on the story that are patently false. In the sense of not being true. From the headline and the tone of the article, one would conclude that the Museum came through the war largely intact, yes? Very few items stolen or destroyed? Not, perhaps, such a big deal as all that, hmm?

Which is completely false. The article, first of all, seems to think the only important artifacts are the monetarily valuable artifacts. That's irrelevant here. These items aren't important because they're worth money. They're important because of their historical significance. Note how offhandedly the article mentions that, by the way, about 5,000 items were definitely taken from one storeroom, but it's okay because they weren't that expensive anyhow? Bunk. Shash, even. We can't exactly walk out to the shops and buy another one, can we? 5,000 artifacts is a not inconsiderable figure, and all of them are important. This figure of 5,000 is also by no means established, given that the Museum's catalogues and documents were all destroyed, and the surviving copies abroad may be out of date, and the Museum staff, who are in a much better position to make judgements than American teams, have yet to inspect the vaults thoroughly. And the damage to the Museum is soft-pedalled to a shocking degree. While it is true that the Museum's collection is in much better shape than was feared (keen use of the passive voice, eh?), the damage was significant and still cannot be fully judged. What's more, since the Museum's files and records have all been destroyed, it'll be extremely difficult to reconstruct what, exactly, the Museum had in its collection before the war, and what has gone missing.

So if anyone tells you that the Museum is just fine, take off your shoe and beat them about the head and shoulders with it until they cry for their Magna Mater. Figuratively speaking.

And complain to the news agencies which are trying to sanitise a fat bloated sickly American blunder, or whitewash that seething pus-filled boil on the anus of the Iraq War. They do a disservice to human civilisation.

PS Andrew Sullivan smells like poop, too.

Posted by aloysius at May 05, 2003 03:57 PM |