‘Cultural Catastrophe’ at Looted Museum

Re “Restoring a Treasured Past,” editorial, April 17: The Times rightly editorializes on the “cultural catastrophe” of the destruction of the Iraq National Museum, yet weakly concludes that “the real blame lies with the looters themselves.” Really?

Protection always involves an imbalance of force. The United States’ invasion upset that relationship. A tank and a few Marines, as Christopher Knight writes in “A cultural casualty of war” (Calendar, April 18), could have protected at trivial cost what the FBI now unrealistically promises to “fix” at huge taxpayer expenditure.

Who in the administration is taking responsibility for the profoundly stupid failure to take defensive measures against such circumstances? The president? Not a priority for him. The vice president? He has returned to his secret cave, unavailable for further comment. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft? Too busy covering up nude statues at the Department of Justice building. How about those great public moralizers, former Education Secretary Bill Bennett and Lynne Cheney, former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities?

Ditto, your editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez, who is always available to tell us what is good for us but now is strangely silent when it comes to taking real responsibility.

Surprising? Just think of Enron and Halliburton. Get used to it, folks.

Robert S. Westman

La Jolla

*

It’s too late for the antiquities looted from the National Museum of Iraq, but ... would it be possible to somehow hide tiny identifying microchips inside art treasures and ancient artifacts? We do it for our pets; why not for these similarly irreplaceable items?

Elaine Hampton

Burbank

*

Blaming the U.S. military for the looting of the Iraqi museum is akin to blaming the judge in the Rodney King trial for the Los Angeles riots. People need to be responsible for their own actions.

Larry Jensen

Montrose