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Apr. 19th, 2003 07:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
malsperanzaFinally have reopened email after being away. How strange: the world really has changed since the last time I posted here.
There are no words for what happened last week in Baghdad; the loss is too great to measure. It feels as though the whole of history had been erased. And in my more paranoid moments, I can't help wondering if that is what the Powers of Darkness wanted in the first place: tabula rasa, Year Zero for human history
After all, America is the culture that claims to be free of history; our glittering shores have always offered the immigrant the chance to escape from the nets of the past, from the fixed identities of the old world. Perhaps, all along, we desired to obliterate from the world's memory all record of our own beginnings--the invention of laws, writing, civil society, urban culture. Perhaps, as Americans, we hate the past, which means so little to us. Perhaps we think we can do without it. And so goodbye to golden Babylon and great Nineveh, to the collections of Qurans and manuscripts, the poets and calligraphers of the courts. Tanks rolled across the delicate excavations of Nebuchadnezzar's palace.
Back in January the scholars were invited to the Pentagon to identify sites too precious to be bombed. We thought then that the Powers might listen. There were at least 2 meetings with high-level planners; we said: guard the museums, guard the sites. The Powers of Darkness cannot plead ignorance or lack of preparation. They just saw no value in the stuff.
And if we ever believed that we had the good of the Iraqi people at heart, let us consider this: dollar for dollar, tourism is the single most lucrative industry in the world--it grosses far greater income than petroleum. The tourists who might have flocked to a restored Iraq would have come to see its incomparable museums, its magnificent library of illuminated manuscripts, its unparalleled wealth of ancient and biblical and Muslim sites. How many will come now to stare at an oil well?
Ach. /rantmode
Must return to original purpose of this thing: to be frivolous and snarky about men in frilly shirts.
There are no words for what happened last week in Baghdad; the loss is too great to measure. It feels as though the whole of history had been erased. And in my more paranoid moments, I can't help wondering if that is what the Powers of Darkness wanted in the first place: tabula rasa, Year Zero for human history
After all, America is the culture that claims to be free of history; our glittering shores have always offered the immigrant the chance to escape from the nets of the past, from the fixed identities of the old world. Perhaps, all along, we desired to obliterate from the world's memory all record of our own beginnings--the invention of laws, writing, civil society, urban culture. Perhaps, as Americans, we hate the past, which means so little to us. Perhaps we think we can do without it. And so goodbye to golden Babylon and great Nineveh, to the collections of Qurans and manuscripts, the poets and calligraphers of the courts. Tanks rolled across the delicate excavations of Nebuchadnezzar's palace.
Back in January the scholars were invited to the Pentagon to identify sites too precious to be bombed. We thought then that the Powers might listen. There were at least 2 meetings with high-level planners; we said: guard the museums, guard the sites. The Powers of Darkness cannot plead ignorance or lack of preparation. They just saw no value in the stuff.
And if we ever believed that we had the good of the Iraqi people at heart, let us consider this: dollar for dollar, tourism is the single most lucrative industry in the world--it grosses far greater income than petroleum. The tourists who might have flocked to a restored Iraq would have come to see its incomparable museums, its magnificent library of illuminated manuscripts, its unparalleled wealth of ancient and biblical and Muslim sites. How many will come now to stare at an oil well?
Ach. /rantmode
Must return to original purpose of this thing: to be frivolous and snarky about men in frilly shirts.
