The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Museum Pieces

4.17.03 @ 12:01AM

AT WHAT COST?
Re: Francis X. Rocca's Pillage People:

Mr. Rocca's article about the pillaging and destruction of treasures from Iraq's National Museum of Antiquities speaks for me and to me.

I was devastated when I heard what had happened. I found it difficult to believe that no one thought to guard the hospitals, banks, and museums.

When I learned that DoD was advised prior to the start of hostilities to take measures to protect the museum and did not do so, I was dumfounded. How could we be so negligent?

Like Mr. Rocca, I was more in disbelief of the museum's destruction than the war's however unfortunate but nevertheless expected casualties.

We couldn't get a 1,000 or so additional troops into Baghdad to cover these sites? Most of the 4th I.D. is still in Kuwait. What about them? What about the thousands of military police who were never even sent to the Iraqi theater?

The TV news media spend a nauseatingly inordinate amount of time talking about the saving of Private Lynch and very little on why we didn't guard the museums and hospitals.

It's way out of proportion.

During the course of the war, a friend e-mailed relating the British claim that their military academy at Sandhurst produces better educated, better spoken, and more cultured officers than the American military academies.

I told her I was inclined to agree with the premise but replied that although John Wayne may not have been well-spoken, he did get the job done.

Unfortunately, John Wayne proved more sophisticated than the American military.

I have a sneaking suspicion that if the Brits had been assigned occupy Baghdad the looting of the museum would not have occurred.

I am a veteran of the Vietnam era. That experience partially forms the basis of my strong support of the military and an assertive foreign policy.

But a number of the shortcomings of our foreign policy thinking and planning have been made painfully clear by the museum looting.

As if foreign leaders and the press really needed another excuse to hammer U.S. policy and actions, we had to go show them what dunderheaded cowboys we really are.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Foreign Policy, Trade, Islam, Law, Military, Iraq, Russia, NATO, Conservatism, Oil