To The Victor Go The Spoils

We all know that war is hell. It ruins lives by displacing families, creating refugees and causing death and destruction. The continuing war in Iraq is also ruining their civilization and their history. Iraq has a lot of things of value including oil; artifacts from an earlier era often called the cradle of civilization.

Since the war started in 2003, the looting of precious artifacts from museums and archeological sites is out of control. According to a story I read in the Philadelphia Inquirer, 10,000 artifacts have been hijacked out of Iraqi museums. Most of these antiquities are ancient : remnants of our earliest ancestors. And while we may be shocked and awed by the cultural rape of the country, we should also know that it has been going on for thousands of years. That said, it’s crimes like these today that really indicate how little war has changed anything about a country’s civility. Yet George W. Bush has believed all along that Democracy will prevail and stabilize Iraq and all it’s neighbours.

War changes very little. It ruins and disparages cultures, buries creativity and leaves bruises on our civil society. Yet Bush and his neocon gang want us to be “patient”. Clearly, people around the world are impatient and want an end to this war asap.

Regrettably, the looting continues, the death count rises and the artifacts of a civilized society are bought and sold on the black market. What an embarrassing record for the history books.

That’s just my opinion. I could be wrong