Baghdad Lullaby II

rsaxena #39
You donot like my posts, you donot like to read my longer posts, or whatever. Here`s the thing : so what?

re: sadna #32

...there, you`re getting the hang of it...brief and to the point...good post...

...as for t, you are right about him as well....

#15 by Bhitai on April 12, 2003 0:54am PT

yes anything for freedom especially if it is american freedom imposed on Iraqis or others. If any country had bombed US for the freedom of Backs a few decades back I wonder what would have been the response of these people.

How come no one ever thought of bombing South Africa to free the blacks from Apartheid.

Hey how about some bombing of India for the freedom of dalits.

ferozk:

just to set the record straight, turks used parthenon as a mosque and then later, as a place to store gun powder. building was actually destroyed by venetians during the siege of acropolis in 1687. later, lord elgin obtained from the turks, a firman which gave him permission to remove sculptures (friezes) that were engraved on the outside part of the temple. here is what lord byron hard to say about this:

Dull is the eye that will not weep to see
Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed
By British hands, which it had best behoved
To guard those relics ne`er to be restored.
Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved,
And once again thy hapless bosom gored,
And snatch`d thy shrinking gods to northern climes abhorred!

Lord Byron
``Childe Harold``

elgin marbles are now one of the most popular exhibits in the british museum. not surprisingly, the greek government is demanding the return of these sculptures. the british government`s response is that greeks are incapable of looking after these sculptures and hence for the good of humanity, these sculptures must reside in the british museum. strangely enough, there were reports in some news papers that an association of antique dealers and collectors in the u.s. was asking uncle sam to remove some of the exhibits in baghdad museum precisely for the same reason. i think there is more to the theft of antiques than meets the eye. i would not be surprised to see some of these artifacts in the hands of americans later on. remember that russian`s sat on Schliemann Gold for about forty five years.

http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,9830,933876,00.html

US lobby could threaten Iraqi heritage

“Apparent lobbying by American art dealers to dismantle Iraq`s strict export laws has heightened fears about the looting of the country`s antiquities as order breaks down in the last stages of the war”.

sadna #31:

``You sound like temporal....who go around telling people what to post.``

...please stop your tunnel-visioned lectures and diatribes...

...you keep repeating lies...and when last i confronted you with specifics you resorted to prevarication and twisting or putting words in another`s mouth...

...i have no problem with vast majority of indians or pakistanis...and certainly do not tell them what to post...

...t

Re: Sadna

The library of Alexanderia, was burned by the Roman legions on the orders of Julius Casear. The Mongols sacked Baghdad in the fourteenth century. The Museum of Dresden, which contained a priceless collection of European bone china, was fire bombed by the British and the BBC reported the raid over Dresden to its listeners by saying, ``today, not a single china stands in Dresden``; the Americans bombed the abbey of Monte Cassino, which was 1400 years old in 1944, and destoryed it. In the First World War, during the siege of the Belgian city of Leige, the Germans are refuted to have set fire to the city`s library and the resulting fire burned irreplaceable medieval manuscripts. The Vandals destroyed Rome. The nose of the Sphinx was shot off by the French artillery of Napoleon Bonaparte, as it was conducting target practice. The Taliban shelled and dynamited the Bamiyan Buddhas. The Croats destroyed the Mostar bridge, the most beautiful example of a single arch bridge, designed in Europe by the Ottoman Turks, during the Balkan crisis in Yugoslavia. The British destroyed and vandalized temples and mosques in India, often using their bayonettes to pry the inlaid gems out of the walls. The Arabs destroyed the Persian monuments at Perispolis and the Turks destroyed the Parthenon in Athens.

Call them Philistines or Vandals or barbarians, it makes no difference.

I agree with you and I also weep. When Hannibal was roaming the Italian countryside, destroying crops and pillaging during the Second Punic War, the frightened citizens of Rome used to cry out: ``Hannibal ad portas``. Hannibal was considered as a barbarian and the cry was, that the barbarians are at the gates! The barbarians are indeed, once more, at the gates of civilization.

Insanus omnis furere credit ceteros - Syrus

It means that every mad person thinks that every other person is mad. The thief accuses everyone else of robbery; the fornicator says we are all unfaithful and the destoryer blames everyone else for the destruction. We question each other`s patriotism, because our own patriotism is questionable. The aggressor blames the victim for the crime.

Ciao

pmishra2 #33 I dont want to even begin contradicting anything you said. I was just commenting on how, with the excitement of the Iraq War petering out, the usual hindu-muslim rubbish is starting with your having lobbed the first shi!tball. What a waste of bloody education you people are!

rsaxena #31
If you can`t read 3 posts, use the scroll bar and stop whining. You sound like temporal and tahmed who go around telling people what to post. You know where you can stick that.

#30 tahmed

Can you contradict any one of my points??? I guess not. Hence the need to characterize criticism as bigotry. I guess you are unable even to see how much your comments conform to ``type``. Most of my comments are taken from the recent UN report on Arab nations.

#27, #25 Sadna

Agreed, with folks like George W. and Rumsfeld we are dealing with deadly arrogance combined with massive ignorance. The desecration of museum in Baghdad is a tragedy for all of us. And a good example of the many unintended consequences of war. Civilians deaths are of course also in this category. We should hold the forces in Iraq to high standards as we go forward.

My own plan of action involves working for democratic ``regime change`` in the US. I think as the Bush-Rumsfeld lack of planning and long-term vision becomes obvious, more and more of the US citizenry will come to an understanding that their investment in Iraq is not being followed through appropriately. I see some signs of this already.

pmishra: I guess the excitement over the Iraq War is over now. Mr. Mishra has tossed a tentative anti-muslim dirtball. Perhaps some desi gentleman will crawl out of from under a stone on the pakistan side and throw an anti-hindu dirtball (attention zeemax!!). Then the shi!t will start flying again.

re: sadna

...please summarize all your posts in 1-2 sentences...thanks...

re: deborah

{i don`t see how my input would make any difference :-) }

...exactly...run along now...

hamidm2 #27
I willnot wish such a fate on anyone, marauding ummah or no marauding ummah.

The rest of the world can only read about the devastation and weep. We were collectively helpless to preserve what had managed to survive for 1000s of years and what had been painstakingly recovered and preserved by multiple generations of dedicated archeologists from around the world.

US troops repeatedly used their enormous military capability to call in B52`s with thousands of pounds of bombs from 100s of miles away simply to protect them from small arms fire, but they couldnot spare a single armored vehicle or handful of Marines to prevent the ransacking of this musuem or that of a single Baghdad hospital.

I suspect George Bush has never heard of Hammurabi or the Abbasids and to him an Eyeraki is nothing but someone who is eagerly waiting to forget his barbaric past and join up with the civilisation of AngloSaxons. Its evident that for Bush and the people who planned the invasion, the ability to eat junk food at a McDonalds or to watch Hollywood-made soft-porn is the only meaningful definition of freedom and culture.

The rest of the world is not so ignorant, nor do I think the rest of the world has sold its soul (as was evident from the mention of the museum`s devastation by a prominent Indonesian leader on CNN) and IMO the US willnot be forgiven for this very soon.

sadna says.......

``Medieval invaders destroyed the heritage of the conquered calling it jahiliya and irrelevant to the `new` values they brought, it seems that the US government has an exactly similar disdain for its conquered people and their heritage``

..... astagfirullah! .... are you equating the prophet muhammad, with george bush ? ..............this is just terrible - you horrible hindoos really know how to sucker punch the ummah when it down on its knees .........

........however, i must admit, old george has done a okay even without help from gabriel and god .......... although, who knows, rummy might be the archangle in disguise .........

Correction to my post #25:
``Medieval invaders destroyed the heritage of the conquered calling it jahiliya and irrelevant to the `new` values they brought, it seems that the US government has an exactly similar disdain for its conquered people and their heritage.

pmishra2 #24
I don`t go with the Islamist cr_p. But there is still a question of Iraqi sense of sovereignty, dignity and identity. Its humiliating to have a foreign power bomb your government out of existence in the name of freedom and justice and then see this foreign power turn around and say `but we are not responsible for law and order`.

Here is a report from Washington Post which typifies the US attitude to preserving Iraqis sense of identity and heritage, preserving their lives vs preserving their oil:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15136-2003Apr12.html
At Baghdad`s Antiquities Museum
`Our Heritage Is Finished`

BAGHDAD, April 12 -- At the National Museum of Antiquities, where priceless artifacts had been wrapped in foam and secured in windowless storage rooms to protect them against U.S. bombs, an army of looters perpetrated what war did not: They smashed hundreds of irreplaceable treasures, including Sumerian clay pots, Assyrian marble carvings, Babylonian statues and a massive stone tablet with intricate cuneiform writing.

As employees returned today to survey the damage at one of the world`s greatest repositories of artifacts, they encountered devastation that defied their worst expectations. The floor was covered with shards of broken pottery. An extensive card catalog of every item the museum owns, some of which date back 5,000 years, was destroyed. A cavernous storeroom housing thousands of unclassified pieces was ransacked so badly that an archaeologist predicted it would be impossible to repair many of the items...``

--

The same report says the Iraqi oil ministery is guarded by the US Marines and their tanks but the Museum with 5000 year old artefacts was allowed to be destroyed.

All of us around the world have all lost the precious irreplaceable links to what is also our heritage, which we were told about in our classrooms. All this due to the decision of the US to go to war without accepting responsibility for the consequences. One can`t say they hadnot anticipated it, because this happened in Kosovo, too.

In any case anyone with common sense could have anticipated this. For example I wrote in January about the contrasts between Iraq and Afghanistan:

`` The US ground troops will have to sort out the chaos themselves on the ground. It will be extremely messy unlike the Afghan war lords who had tribal alliances, personal armies and local influence and can and could impose their will/peace on portions of the countryside. Once they decided to switch sides, they simply switched hats and Afghanistan was won. No such joy in Iraq.``

The US government cannot plead ignorance about these artefacts and museums. It was reported on NPR and by Robert Fisk that US academics/experts had given the US government a comprehensive list of archeological/heritage sites to protect as far back as in January.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=396743

You have to wonder, exactly what values is the US claiming to be heroically fighting for? Medieval invaders destroyed the invaders heritage calling it jahiliya and irrelevant to the `new` values they brought, it seems that the US government has an exactly similar disdain for its conquered people and their heritage.