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Recent
Stories
April
15, 2003
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Robert
Jensen
Self-Determination in Iraq? Then the
US Must Leave
Dr.
Susan Block
The Rape of Iraq
Ron Jacobs
Aiming at Syria: Stop Them Before They Kill Again
Robert
Fisk
The Final Sacking of Baghdad
Col. Dan
Smith
Post-War Iraq: Asking the Right Questions
Ali
Abunimah and Hussein Ibish
A Cycle of Chaos and Confrontation: Misadventures of the NeoCons
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/15
April
14, 2003
Chris
Floyd
Bush's War Without End
Uri Avnery
Gunboat Democracy: This is Only the Beginning
Wayne
Madsen
Americans: The New Mongols of the Mideast?
Shahid
Alam
Iqra: Iraq is Free
Hani
Shukrallah
Day of the Chicken Hawks
Terry
Jones
The Iraq Gravy Train
John
Chuckman
The Iraq War's Trashiest Piece of Propaganda
Patrick
Cockburn
US has a Lot to Answer For: Violence,
Misery and Poverty in Iraq
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/14
April
12 / 13, 2003
Carol
Lipton
Wag the Kennel: the Kenneth Joseph
Story
Wayne
Madsen
Meet the New Butcher of Baghdad: Maj.
Gen. Buford Blount III
John
Brown
"They Got It Down": the Toppling
of the Saddam Statue
Kathy and
Bill Christison
Final Thoughts from Palestine
William
Blum
Our Vulnerable Warmongers' Rush to Justify Devastation
Wallace
Gagne
Let the Stealing Begin
Ann
Harrison
Rosenthal Update: Judge Delays Ruling in Medical Pot Mistrial
Case
Henry Miller
What is the Greatest Treason?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Render Unto Cesar
Zeljko
Cipris
Mocking Militarism: On Ishikawa Jun's Song of Mars
Ishikawa
Jun
The Song of Mars
Jamey Hecht
Chairman of the Sandwich Board
Adam
Engel
Hell of a Town: Mayor Bloomberg and
the News
Poets'
Basement
Chang Yang-Hao, Adam Engel and Hammond Guthrie
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/12
April
11, 2003
Omar
Barghouti
From Saddam to Uncle Sam
Ron
Jacobs
Greed is Rewarded
David
Vest
The Corporate War on Iraq
Paul
de Rooij
Propaganda Stinkers: Fresh Samples from the Field
Anthony
Gancarski
Foreign Aid: Embezzlement as Public Policy
Mas'ood
Cajee
Franklin Graham: Spiritual Carpetbagger
Michael
Neumann
Now What?
Michael
Berry
The Neo-Cons Have a Dream
Stew Albert
Oh Freedom
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/11
Website
of the Day
About Those Dancing Crowds
April
10, 2003
Zoltan
Grossman
The Perils of Occupation: the Easier
the Victory, the Harder the Peace
Uri
Avnery
The Night After
Wayne Madsen
The Telltale Signs of Empire
David Krieger
Before You Become Too Flushed with Victory, Think of Ali Ismaeel
Abbas
Jeremy
Brecher
What Can the World Do Now That Tanks Prowl Baghdad?
Robert
Jensen
The Unseen War
Geoffrey
Neale
Ashcroft's War on the Constitution:
A Patriot Attack on America
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Last Tango in Baghdad
Hammond
Guthrie
Rumors of War
Joseph
Heller
Nately's Old Man
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/10
Website
of the Day
The
Third Page
April
9, 2003
David
Lindorff
Secret Bechtel Docs Reveal: Yes,
the War Is About Oil
Doug
Lummis
Saving Private Lynch: Hollywood and
War
Susan
Davis
The New York Times and the Peace Movement
David Vest
Smoking Gun? You're Watching It
John
Chuckman
America's Sovereign Right to Do
as It Damn Well Pleases
Akiva
Eldar
Gary Bauer and AIPAC: an Unholy Alliance
with the Christian Right
Ray
Hanania
Suicide Bombers without the Suicide:
Racism, Hypocrisy and the War on Iraq
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/9
April
8, 2003
David
Lindorff
Killing the Messengers: It Doesn't
Matter If It's Deliberate or Accidental
Richard
Lichtman
Dr. Phil in the Trenches
John
Brown
Why Uncle Ben Hasn't Sold Uncle Sam:
a Former Foreign Service Staffer on Bush's Policy Failures
Ben
Terrall
Report from the Oakland Docks: "The
Cops Had No Reason to Open Up on Them"
Jason Leopold
FERC and Wall Street: Conversations
May Have Violated Federal Law
Anthony
Gancarski
Conyers Heeds the Call on Perle
Linda Heard
Journalists Die, the Networks Lie, Iraqis Ask "Why?"
Ahmad
Faruqui
Wallowing in Hypocrisy
Wallace
Gagne
Baghdad Babble
Harry
Browne
Report from the Protests at the Bush/Blair
Summit
Larry Kearney
I Understand There's a Boy in
a Baghdad Hospital
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/8
M. Shahid
Alam
The Israelization of America
April
7, 2003
Todd
Chretien
Wooden Bullets & Grenades: Oakland
Cops Attack Peace Protesters and Dock Workers
David
N. Gibbs
Spying, Secrecy and the University:
The CIA is Back on Campus
Harry Browne
War and Peace Summit a Royal Farce
Gideon
Levy
America is Not a Role Model
Diane
Christian
A Scene from an Obscene War
Jules
Rabin
Remembering Deir Yassin
James Davis
Oddsmaking in Dublin: Will Bush
Shake Gerry's Hand?
Robert
Fisk
The Twisted Language of War
Patrick
Cockburn
Slaughter on the Road to Dibagah
John
Mackay
War and Art
Seth Sandronsky
Wars and the Color Line
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/7
April
5, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
The Iraqi Humanitarian Relief is
in Shambles
Anne
Gwynne
A Drowning in Salem
Uri
Avnery
Roadmap to Nowhere
Chris
Floyd
Hell for Leather: Bombs, Bullets, Bibles and Bush
William
Cook
Would You Have Sent Your Son (or Daughter) Off to War If...
Gila
Svirsky
A Busy Day for Bulldozers
Mike Ferner
Back from Baghdad: What Next for the Peace Movement?
Joanne
Mariner
Civilian Deaths and Official Apologies
John Stanton
Bush Takes His Killing Orders
from the Lord
Romi
Mahajan
Learning to Count the Dead
Aluf Benn
After Iraq, US Vows to Deal with
Other Mideast Regimes
Mary
Ellen Peterson
Gay Marine Refuses to Fight
William
MacDougall
Country Music and the Crimes of Patriotism
Ron
Jacobs
War and Occupation
Bernie
Pattison
Aborigines and the Different God
Mark
Engler
Iraq War as Arms Expo
Adam Engel
Li'l Box of Love: a Novelini
Poets'
Basement
Tripp, Albert, Katz
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Flesh and Its Discontents: the Paintings of Lucian Freud
Norman
Madarasz
Canada and the War
April
4, 2003
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell's Shame
John
Chuckman
Was Einstein Right About Israel?
David
Krieger
The Meaning of Victory
Tom
Gorman
The Mantra of the Troops: Support
or Treason?
Adam
Federman
The Absence of War
Vijay
Prashad
There Are No More Arguments
Tom
Stephens
The End of the Innocence
Mickey
Z.
Makes Me Sic (Sic): Copy Editing
Bush Speak
Pierre
Tristam
War Coverage: a Dishonest Reality
Show
Hammond
Guthrie
The Deadly Mihrab
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/04
April
3, 2003
Uri
Avnery
A Crooked Mirror: Presstitution and
the Theater of Operations
David
Vest
Can You Hear the Silence?
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell Telemarketer
David
Lindorff
Takoma: the Dolphin Who Refused
to Fight
Michael
Roberts
War, Debts and Deficits
Ramzy
Baroud
Now That Iraqis Are Being Killed Is Israel Any More Secure?
Jo Wilding
From Baghdad with Tears
Anton
Antonowicz
Cluster Bombs on Babylon
Alison
Weir
Israel, We Won't Forget Rachel Corrie
Bruce
Jackson
Hating Wolf Blitzer's Voice
Eliot Katz
War's First Week
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/03
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April 17,
2003
Looting Antiquity
The Legal Implications for
the Pentagon
by
JOANNE MARINER
While Baghdad burned, Donald Rumsfeld fiddled.
Questioned about the orgy of looting and pillaging taking place
under the gaze of U.S. forces, Rumsfeld criticized the media
for exaggerating the extent of the damage.
"The images you are seeing on television,
you are seeing over and over and over," he complained. "It's
the same picture of some person walking out of some building
with a vase and you see it twenty times. And you think, my goodness,
were there that many vases?"
After pausing for laughter, Rumsfeld
delivered the punch line: "Is it possible that there were
that many vases in the whole country?"
Well yes, as it turns out, it is possible.
Not only vases, but gold, silver and copper antiquities, stone
carvings, cuneiform tablets, and ivory figurines were among the
irreplaceable objects lost in Baghdad's days of anarchy and turmoil.
The pillage of these priceless artifacts is no laughing matter.
Many were thousands of years old, the last material vestiges
of ancient cities like Babylon, Kalkhu, Nineveh and Ur.
Last week, after two days of unhindered
pillage, the Baghdad museum that housed these treasures was emptied.
By Friday afternoon, when Rumsfeld made his dismissive comments,
looters were carting away the last spoils. They left in their
wake a chaos of smashed ceramics, broken display cases, and torn
books. According to the museum's deputy director, who blamed
U.S. forces for refusing to prevent the plunder, at least 170,000
items were taken or destroyed.
The pillage of Iraq's National Museum
should have come as no surprise. And if the risks were obvious,
the legal responsibilities were equally clear.
The Lessons of Gulf
War I
In 1991, at the close of the first Gulf
War, nine of Iraq's regional museums were looted by rampaging
mobs opposed to Saddam Hussein's government. While the national
museum did not come under attack at that time, because the government
retained firm control over Baghdad, it lost a number of artifacts
that had been tranferred to regional museums for safekeeping.
In all, about 4,000 items were stolen
or destroyed during the 1991 looting spree, including some that
were thousands of years old. Some of the pieces were later smuggled
out of Iraq, and were, by the following year, turning up at art
auctions and in the hands of dealers in London and New York.
The lessons of this close precedent were
not lost on archaeologists and scholars. Well prior to the outbreak
of the current war, they warned the Pentagon of the dangers to
Iraq's cultural heritage posed by postwar pillage and destruction.
The Legal Responsibility
to Protect Cultural Property
Under the laws of war, the United States
is obligated to ensure public order in territories that it occupies,
and to prevent looting and other forms of lawlessness. More
specifically, it is required to protect museums and other cultural
property against damage.
The primary international treaty on this
point is the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property
in the Event of Armed Conflict, drafted in 1954. The convention
specifies that an occupying power must take necessary measures
to safeguard and preserve the cultural property of the occupied
country.
Because this rule codifies customary
international law, it is binding even on countries like the United
States that have signed but not ratified the convention. (Iraq
is a party to the convention, as are 102 other countries.)
Interestingly, international rules to
protect cultural property from looting and damage are an American
innovation, dating back to the Civil War. Revulsion at widespread
destruction during that war led to the drafting of the Lieber
Code, which gave protected status to libraries, scientific collections
and works of art. The Lieber Code's protections had a significant
influence on the development on international law in this area,
culminating in the drafting of the 1954 convention and its subsequent
protocols.
Of course, the U.S. responsibility to
protect Iraq's cultural property is not absolute. Legitimate
battlefield demands might well take priority over the duty to
protect. But even if an investigation is necessary to clarify
whether U.S. forces failed in their duties, the evidence of negligence
so far available is compelling.
Not only did the Pentagon have prior
notice of the likelihood of looting, museum officials reportedly
called on troops to stop the plunder just after it began. At
the urging of an Iraqi archaeologist, a group of marines with
a tank opened fire above looters' heads and drove them away.
But instead of staying to protect the building, the marines
left, and the looters returned. Ignoring museum officials' pleas,
the U.S. troops took no action to stop the plunder.
The museum's deputy director decried
the American refusal to help: "If they had [provided] just
one tank and two soldiers nothing like this would have happened."
"Stuff Happens"
"Stuff happens," Rumsfeld told
a Pentagon news briefing on April 11, when asked about widespread
looting in Baghdad.
"But," he continued, "it
is a fundamental misunderstanding to see those images over and
over and over again of some boy walking out with a vase and say,
'Oh, my goodness, you didn't have a plan.' That's nonsense."
Two days later, faced with overwhelming
proof of mayhem in Baghdad, Rumsfeld again disavowed responsibility
for the looters' rampage.
When the interviewer pointed out that
Iraqi museum officials claimed that they had asked the U.S. military
to protect the museum, and that the military had refused, Rumsfeld
responded: "Oh, my goodness. Look, I have no idea."
Looting, he concluded "isn't something
that someone allows or doesn't allow. It's something that happens."
An Avoidable Disaster
Looting most definitely happens when
the authorities take no steps to prevent it. Unfortunately, the
evidence suggests that this was the case with Iraq's National
Museum and its priceless collection of artifacts.
The New York Times, in an article
published last weekend, said that the ransacking of the National
Museum will probably be remembered as "one of the greatest
cultural disasters in recent Middle Eastern history." What
is worse, it will be remembered as a disaster that was avoidable.
Joanne Mariner
is a human rights attorney. An earlier version of this piece
appeared in FindLaw's Writ. She can be reached at: mariner@counterpunch.org.
Today's
Features
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Robert
Jensen
Self-Determination in Iraq? Then the
US Must Leave
Dr.
Susan Block
The Rape of Iraq
Ron Jacobs
Aiming at Syria: Stop Them Before They Kill Again
Robert
Fisk
The Final Sacking of Baghdad
Col. Dan
Smith
Post-War Iraq: Asking the Right Questions
Ali
Abunimah and Hussein Ibish
A Cycle of Chaos and Confrontation: Misadventures of the NeoCons
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/15
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