Balder Ex-Libris

Authors : Baker Raymond W. - Ismael Tareq Y. - Ismael Shereen T.
Title : Cultural cleansing in Iraq Why museums were looted, libraries burned and academics murdered
Year : 2010

Link download : Baker_Raymond_W_-_Cultural_cleansing_in_Iraq.zip

Preface. No reasonable person, even those critics most angry and disgusted with the Bush administration, would claim that the destruction of particular Iraqi cultural treasures or the assassination of specifi c scholars was the aim of the armchair “warriors” who planned and launched the war against Iraq. Nevertheless, the destruction was willful. The war planners quite consciously and deliberately aimed for the destruction of the Iraqi state. They did so because a strong Iraq was an impediment to American imperial designs and Israeli insistence on unimpeded regional hegemony. A strong Iraqi state cast a shadow on both visions. In willful violation of international law against preventative war and with complete disregard for its responsibilities as an occupying power, the United States and its allies have failed to protect Iraq’s incomparable cultural treasures. Given the scope of the destruction that took place on their watch, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the occupiers understood that damaging the cultural underpinnings of Iraqi identity would also hasten the collapse of modern day Iraq. In just the same way, the apparent indifference and failure to respond to the decimation of the Iraqi intellectual class through targeted assassinations points to the conclusion that Iraq’s occupiers and their allies had little interest in preserving the priceless human resources represented by Iraq’s educated elite. Oil mattered and so Oil Ministry records were protected. The fi les of the Interior Ministry that would certainly have compromised both Americans and Israelis mattered and so they were protected. In contrast, priceless archaeological artifacts and leading scholars faced the looters and the assassins alone and undefended. The aim of this book is to demonstrate to the world in the most precise and accurate way that conditions created by the occupiers enabled the cultural destruction of Iraq. ...