Lest we forget...

Thirty more people killed in a mosque explosion in Iraq today, Bush. I notice how your war has slipped below the headlines. The media has other troughs to feed at, I suppose. Your Negroponte, your Social Security plot… How easily we get distracted from what's really going on. But I was thinking about your war last night as I watched a program on the History Channel. (Do you watch it, Bush?) I get hooked especially on anything to do with World War II, because that's my childhood, Bush, right there. I was living within sixty miles of London during the Blitz, as I think I mentioned in an earlier entry in this diary, and we used to get streams of terrified refugees coming out by the busload, spending the night in blanketed rows in our coal cellar alongside the shelves of potatoes and apples. I remember, when the air raid sirens went, we'd have to go down there and join them, and the fear was palpable and rank.

Anyway, that's a bit beside the point. The program I was watching had to do with the end of the fighting in Europe, and its aftermath, and I couldn't help but think about Iraq. Did you know that Eisenhower set up a whole special army brigade to find and protect lost cultural treasures from the ravages of the war? The project was called "Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives"--or MFAA--and the officers involved were charged with locating and protecting anything connected with the continent's cultural heritage from both enemies and friends. Eisenhower wrote that this represented "all that we are fighting to preserve," and insisted on its careful preservation.

So my thoughts went, of course, to the aftermath of your adventure in Iraq, particularly, at first, to the absence of any planning for the protection of institutions and administrative archives after the fall of Baghdad. I remembered particularly the fate of the national museum, and the scene of looters walking in and carrying off the country's cultural wealth with absolute impunity. I remembered the shots of government offices left in ruins, stripped of valuable historical and archival information. All this because you, Bush, had listened to your arrogant (and civilian) Rumsfeld rather than your generals, who knew what to expect; and because you failed to send in sufficient troops to provide even the scantiest protection for what Eisenhower rightly called "all that we are fighting to preserve". That's not just some abstract idea of liberty and democracy, Bushm but the living heritage and traditions, the life-blood of a country's organization and its spirit. And look what followed this oversight. I can't help but think there would have been less chaos during the occupation, less death and destruction, had more troops been on the ground to protect that civil life, as they were in Europe all those years ago.

Which brings me back to the thirty people killed in the mosque today. Because the mosque, more than anything, is surely at the heart of that devastated country's cultural heritage, both as the spiritual core and the embodiment of the history of Iraqi art and architecture. From the beginning of this misadventure, we have failed to understand, let alone respect, the power and the potential divisions in the religious life of the country. We have stepped not simply into a political and legal morass of international proportions, but a cultural one as well. And whether we know it or not, our culture runs deeper in the veins than any other institution.

How good to be reminded that Eisenhower understood this, even in his capacity as a military leader. How sad that this understanding seems to have been forgotten by your administration today. A bunch of Philistines, Bush. And more's the pity.