Re: Some provocative thoughts about looting in Iraq

I think that there was a deliberateness to US policy regarding the looting.  
The looting and the burning of the musemus, libraries, and art centers,  was 
the looting and burning of 'cultural' treasures, it amounted to a symbolic 
degrading of Iraqi collective memory, perhaps as revenge for the symbolic 
destruction of finance and capital represented by the World Trade Center.  I am 
inclined to think it was allowed to happen as a means of further degrading
Iraq and its people in particular, and the Arabs and the Third World in general 
- as was the bombing of a mosque in which Sadaam was supposedly hiding.  But 
then what does one expect of philistines who have little or no understanding of 
culture, history, art or aesthetic values, whose only capacities lie in the 
ability to use violence to plunder, sack, destroy, annihilate, and then to 
offer humanitarian aid?   This is  military humanism, the ruling culture
of world capitalism attempting to resort to what I call a "military fix" to the 
contemporary crisis, in which one of the forms the 'fix' takes is the 
destruction of all traces of existence of a former (Islamic) civilization.  The 
destruction once complete will then pave the way for a 'reconstructive' 
solution in which coca cola and McDonald hamburgers  will replace much of what 
took place before.  I doubt if it will work out in the way in which it is
imagined it will work. Ganesh.

Threehegemons@aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 4/15/2003 8:08:15 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
>spectors@netnitco.net writes:
>
> > But I would like to pose some provocative thoughts. Many of the looters may 
>have been motivated by nihilism; many may be criminals. Maybe. But many were 
>motivated by the possibility of getting some money. It is easy to sit here and 
>condemn someone as "greedy" because they break into a museum and steal a gold 
>cup, but from their point of view, if they can sell that cup for $50, it might 
>feed their family for a month or buy
> > antibiotics to save the lives of their children.
>
> I don't think this is particularly controversial.  In a system of inequality 
>based on private property, when control breaks down, people seize all kinds of 
>stuff.  What is striking is that after making promises to museum officials 
>about protecting this heritage the US simply let looters run wild in the 
>museum.  It seems the US has not learned much about the pyscho-cultural 
>effects its actions might have since it planted troops in the holy land of 
>Mecca.
>
> Steven Sherman