A cultural casualty of war

One tank. That’s about all it would have taken to prevent the wholesale destruction of the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad last week, where a stellar repository of ancient civilization was looted and trashed after American and British forces entered the city, toppling the ironfisted regime of Saddam Hussein. A mighty American tank or two, and a few watchful soldiers, strategically parked by the front door surely could have prevented the catastrophe, which was reportedly carried out with a blend of randomness and precision. A couple of dozen men, women and even children began the looting one day, hundreds finished it the next.

But, come on now. Let’s be serious. Is anybody really surprised that Baghdad’s great civic art museum didn’t rate a measly tank? That the treasures of ancient Mesopotamia sat unguarded and exposed, ripe for the picking by local scavengers either amateur or professional? The horrendous event was not, after all, a dire outcome of “the fog of war.” It was instead a routine example of the fog of the Bush administration, when it comes to matters cultural.

Today it is almost universally accepted that, in the long run-up to the invasion of Iraq, the United States did the dance of international diplomacy with two left feet. Diplomatic negotiation isn’t just a matter of bare-knuckled, bottom-line horse trading that forces determined adversaries finally to agree. It’s a nuanced give-and-take, an incremental persuasion that rises or falls on an understanding of social mores and the complex pageant of cultural sensitivities. There’s a reason that diplomacy is called an art, not a science or a business.

Art is not this administration’s long suit. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked at a Pentagon press briefing this week whether the military had made a mistake in failing to defend the museum. (The House of Wisdom, Iraq’s national library, where the country’s historical archives are kept, was also severely damaged.) Noting that the museum was not considered of major importance when sporadic combat operations were still underway in isolated pockets around the sprawling city, Gen. Myers explained, “It’s as much as anything a matter of priorities.”

We know that, general; we know. Irreplaceable cultural artifacts dating to the dawn of civilization in the Middle East were not a Bush administration priority. That’s the problem.

An office building in downtown Baghdad housing the Ministry of Oil was a priority, and a tank or two was dispatched post-haste to secure that hugely valuable site -- even as those sporadic combat operations were still underway around town. But an art museum? Please.

Oil is a one-dimensional asset. It’s property that can be bought and sold. This, an administration composed of oil men understands.

Art, on the other hand, is a two-dimensional asset. It’s property, yes; the looters know well that it can have significant commercial value, and the illicit trade in antiquities saw its leading indicators take a giant leap last week. But aside from monetary worth, art is also an intangible resource -- one that has immense use-value. It’s a repository of meaning, a reservoir of social faith, a talisman of historical identity. Art has benefits that cannot be measured in dollars and cents alone. And it’s a value that is critically needed now.

Why? Because whatever the horrendous atrocities perpetrated by Hussein’s cruel dictatorship, Iraq today lies in ruin. We, having smashed it, are obliged to play a major role in fixing it. And for that monumental task we need all the assistance we can get. The Iraqi National Museum could have helped.

Not immediately securing the museum was more than just a cultural shame -- although it was certainly that. It was also a gross strategic blunder. The Bush administration squandered an instrument of extraordinary power for rebuilding Iraq, when it desperately needs every useful tool it can get.

Broad skepticism has been voiced around the world about America’s capacity to impose democracy on Iraq, a country riven with ethnic, tribal, religious and political differences.

Whatever those manifold cultural distinctions might be, however, they all share one thing: The art, artifacts and archives housed in the Iraqi National Museum and the National Library comprise their common legacy. They’re one thing everybody owns. They represent the deep roots of the great tree that spread out its multitude of limbs. And now those roots are severed.

Some of the looted sculptures, vessels, manuscripts and other objects might someday find their way back to the museum and the library. There is speculation, too, that certain critically important works may have been removed from the premises for safekeeping before the war began. And major archeological sites around the country, of which there is no shortage, seem for the moment to be relatively intact. American forces apparently took precautions not to bomb them.

But Baghdad is different. Baghdad is -- well, Baghdad. A thousand years ago it was the glittering cultural capital of an entire region, the extraordinarily productive seat of great art, literature and thought.

Today it’s being advanced by a new U.S. foreign policy as another type of regional linchpin -- a catalyst for wider political reform in the Middle East. Baghdad is meant to be a vital hub.

Imagine what it could have meant for the prospects of that hellishly fraught task had foreign armed forces come together to save the cultural treasure that all Iraqis, regardless of affiliation, claim as their own patrimony. Imagine how the glory of one of the world’s great art museums might have been useful as an international rallying point. Imagine -- but never mind. Now there is no point.