Jonas

I wrote about the centrality of the War on Iraq to the Presidential Campaign.  This week I am beginning what will be an occasional re-visit to columns that I have written on the War, over time.  Here I am presenting the first part of what has become a two-parter from that very column of mine on the subject, way back then.  For that column I did adopt a literary maneuver, putting some of my words into the mouth of a "friend" with the initials A.L.  With apologies to the late, great sports writer Ring Lardner, I entitled the column "You Know Me, Al."   "Al's thoughts" were actually written by me, in May, 2003.  So the column that you see here is all my writing, most of it dating back about a year before I started writing for TPJ.  And now, on to the subject at hand, going back to the time of the invasion and the run-up to it. 

   Widespread looting in Baghdad and other major Iraqi cities.  The destruction of the museum of antiquities in Baghdad including the removal of such items as a tablet on which was inscribed the Code of Hammurabi. I believe that it was the first known set of rules of law. (How ironic that its disappearance is the result of the combined work of two men for whom the rule of law is viewed only as an impediment to their continued rule, Saddam Hussein and George Bush.) This destruction will go down in history as of the same order as the burning of the library at Alexandria, c. 400 CE.  [Well perhaps not that apocalyptic; there were some recoveries since the time of the looting, but I don't know if the Tablet was among them.] The US, even six days later, was doing little to control the situation (although by that time it was doing more than the absolute nothing it did for the first four days or so).  As for the museum specifically and how it was allowed to fall to the mob, I have heard two stories, both on NPR.  One is that the museum directors, anticipating trouble, asked the US forces to guard the place, and were refused.  The other variant is that the US forces agreed to do so and then did not.

   Among the criticisms of the US/UK invasion, which resulted in the ongoing incapacity and partial destruction of the Iraqi infrastructure, esp. electricity supply, pure water supply, sanitary sewage disposal, health services, fire-fighting, garbage collection, etc., has been "how could the invaders not plan for this predictable outcome?"  [Amazing, isn't it, that most of the disruption of basic services to the people of Iraq has still not been effectively dealt with, except in limited areas, and in some places, like Falluja, it's much worse.]  Thinking it over at the time, I think that they did plan for it, that in fact things are going pretty much according to plan, and that this plan for the humbling of Iraq and its inhabitants is part of a larger US plan (to which the UK may or may not have been privy) that has been going extremely well, from its perspective.  To wit.