{"id":232,"date":"2003-04-16T11:41:03","date_gmt":"2003-04-16T16:41:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/?p=232"},"modified":"2009-03-18T11:44:30","modified_gmt":"2009-03-18T16:44:30","slug":"excuses-excuses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/2003\/04\/16\/excuses-excuses\/","title":{"rendered":"Excuses, excuses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nIt was entirely predictable that when the news of the looting of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2003\/04\/12\/international\/worldspecial\/12CND-BAGH.html\">National Museum of Iraq<\/a> broke, the usual idiots would start making excuses for the coalition&#8217;s inaction. Let&#8217;s take a look at them.\n<\/p>\n<ul class=\"nobullet\">\n<li>\n&#8220;<cite>The liberation of 24 million people is more important than guarding some pottery.<\/cite>&#8220;<br \/>\nIt isn&#8217;t an either\/or question. This socalled &#8220;liberation&#8221; does not require the destruction of musea.\n<\/li>\n<li>\n&#8220;<cite>It was a choice between guarding the museum and guarding the hospitals.<\/cite>&#8220;<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailytelegraph.co.uk\/news\/main.jhtml?xml=\/news\/2003\/04\/12\/whosp12.xml\">They didn&#8217;t guard the hospitals either.<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.upi.com\/view.cfm?StoryID=20030411-034721-6126r\">Nor was Iraq&#8217;s main nuclear site<\/a>.\n<\/li>\n<li>\n&#8220;<cite><br \/>\nThere weren&#8217;t enough soldiers to stop the plundering, they were needed to deal with the last strongholds.<br \/>\n<\/cite>&#8220;<br \/>\nBut there were enough <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A15136-2003Apr12.html\">to guard the ministry of oil, the ministry of interior and irrigation<\/a>.\n<\/li>\n<li>\n&#8220;<cite>We didn&#8217;t know this would happen.<\/cite>&#8220;<br \/>\nAu contraire. There were <a href=\"http:\/\/www.agi.it\/english\/news.pl?doc=200303262007-0290-RT1-CRO-0-NF11\">plenty<\/a> of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A19691-2003Apr13.html\">warnings<\/a>. Even if there hadn&#8217;t been any warnings, anybody with half a brain should&#8217;ve realised that looting would followed the fall of Saddam&#8217;s regime, as surely as night follows day and planned for it.\n<\/li>\n<li>\n&#8220;<cite><br \/>\nWhy aren&#8217;t you condemming the looters? It&#8217;s not the coalition&#8217;s fault they started plundering!<br \/>\n<\/cite>&#8220;<br \/>\nThe British <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/article\/0,,5944-635035,00.html\">encouraged looting<br \/>\nin Bashra<\/a>. Neither they nor the Americans did anything to stop the looting before it was far too<br \/>\nlate, even though they were <a href=\"http:\/\/www.csmonitor.com\/2003\/0414\/p08s02-wome.html\">begged<\/a> to do so. Under the terms of the Geneva Convention, as Robert Fisk<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/views03\/0412-02.htm\">points out<\/a>, the coalition has the explicit responsibility to maintain order and prevent pillage. In other words, it <cite>is<\/cite> the coalition&#8217;s fault this happened. There&#8217;s no need to condemn the looters themselves, because all sane persons already agree that looting is bad. (Instapundit, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.instapundit.com\/archives\/008801.php\">on the other hand&#8230;<\/a>)\n<\/li>\n<li>\n&#8220;<cite>Why aren&#8217;t you condemming Saddam?<\/cite>&#8221; Etc.<br \/>\nPerhaps because Bagdhad is under control of coalition force and the Ba&#8217;ath regime has been overthrown?\n<\/li>\n<li>\n&#8220;<cite>A bit of plundering is harmless, it shows that Saddam no longer is in charge.<\/cite>&#8220;<br \/> <br \/>\nActually, no. Plundering just means other bastards with guns are stealing the wealth of Iraq.\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\nIf you are looking for what archeological finds were lost in this war, an attempt at a comprehensive<br \/>\nsurvey is available <a href=\"http:\/\/cctr.umkc.edu\/user\/fdeblauwe\/iraq.html\">here<\/a>. It doesn&#8217;t<br \/>\nmake for pleasant reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was entirely predictable that when the news of the looting of the National Museum of Iraq broke, the usual idiots would start making excuses for the coalition&#8217;s inaction. Let&#8217;s take a look at them. &#8220;The liberation of 24 million people is more important than guarding some pottery.&#8220; It isn&#8217;t an either\/or question. This socalled [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[175,174,2446],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-war-on-iraq","tag-looting","tag-national-museum-of-iraq","tag-war-on-iraq"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":233,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions\/233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}