THE PERILS OF ABSTRACTION

Today's Tagesspiegel notes the reaction of archeologists and Iraq-specialists to the looting of the Baghdad National Museum. The article is based mostly on an interview with Margarete van Ess from the German Archaeological Institute. A page on their website gives the same kind of message as the Tagesspiegel article: it's not clear what has been lost and experts should go to the region quickly to take stock of the situation.

The article does note that the Lions from Tell Harmal were beheaded, as were some of the statues from Hatra; the article notes also that journalists filming the aftermath of the looting were walking through shards of ancient pottery.

Some of the commentary on the looting seems to presume that items were primarily removed intact. John Derbyshire's NRO article for example, argues that the materials are not Iraqi cultural heritage anyway; they belong to humanity and hence we should be happy that they were taken out of a politically unstable (or, in Derbyshire's term, barbaric) region. Whatever. This story is depressing enough without people engaging in going-against-the-grain, self-promoting, cheap-shot editorials. Derbyshire has to ignore the actual destruction that took place for his argument to make any sense. At any rate, Derbyshire's argument shows the logical conclusion of one strand of the abstract argument that the "interests of humanity" are fulfilled by particular instances of cruelty and destruction. Kevin Drum is right to call Derbyshire's argument imperialist.