The righties have been crowing about the fact that “only” a hundred or so pieces are missing from the Iraqi National Museum, rather than the tens of thousands initially reported. Leaving aside the question of how Westerners might feel if “only” a hundred pieces were looted from, say, the Met or the Louvre, I’m kind of unclear as to how this exonerates the US. My understanding of the story is that various historians begged the military to guard the museum, and the military failed to do so (though they did go all out to keep the records at the Oil Ministry safe). The fact that the museum’s curators managed to hide the majority of the museum’s treasures in advance does not make the US indifference to that museum’s looting any more ethically palatable. If a police officer stands by and watches a mugger shoot a victim and does nothing to stop it, he’s still guilty of negligence even if the victim lives because he happened to be wearing a bulletproof vest.
BY TOM TOMORROW