4A = THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
FRIDAY,MAY2,2003
FACE-OFH
Protecting humanity's heritage during war
Oversight damages Iraqi pride
A new piece of blatant international irresponsibility was recently added to the Bush administration's growing, careless menagerie — the allowed looting of Baghdad museums containing the oldest known evidence of human civilization. Don't let anyone persuade you that this humanitarian tragedy was 1) out of our country's hands or 2) condonable for any reason.
The truth is quite simple: The U.S. military had the opportunity to protect the museums with Marines. Blaming Iraqis in this travesty makes absolutely no sense. If we set out to liberate an oppressed Iraqi hoard, should we not have expected them to loot all of Baghdad's resources that could alleviate the financial oppression from Hussein's regime?
The cost of losing Iraq's antiquities are staggering, for academics and in the abstract, and for the future sense of Iraq as a country and culture.
The wealth of human civilization's history, which exists no place on Earth with more depth than from the Fertile Crescent in Iraq, has been lost because of our administration's careless oversight. The majority of that embodied national pride may be lost forever, causing difficulties for the future unification of Iraqi citizens.
This "preventative" war was questionable to begin with, and the United States must now deal with failing to prevent the destruction of the earliest evidences of human civilization on earth. An archaeological loss of this magnitude cannot and should not go excused or dismissed. In a thousand years people will talk not about the coming traiqi state but about what was carelessly lost last week.
Snaaan Puzaauusk for the ediitior board
on Sept. 10. This, by the way, is the same Ashcroft who, since that time, has been spearheading the effort to strip away the rights of citizens and noncitizens in the name of fighting terrorism.
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I think Susan Wagle just doesn't get any ass.
丽
Is she still my best friend if she forgets to pick me up for work in the morning and gives me scabies?
I was simply asking these little middle-schoolers if it was a holiday today because there were thousands of them on Mass. Street today, and they told me to f-off. What's up with that?
Lance Meneley for The University Daily Kanser
I
Now that those Monologues are coming up, I see the word "Vagina" every day and it just gets funnier and funnier.
Everybody keeps looking for Saddam Hussein, but no one seems to realize that no one has seen or heard from Dick Cheney in over six months.
In response to all the artistic Jayhawk haters, what's wrong with it? Jayhawk pride all over Lawrence. It's a beautiful thing.
Hey Wagle, maybe you should ban the Axe deodorant commercials, too.
Honk Bobo's nose.
Isn't it ironic how some people use their constitutional right to freedom of speech to take away someone else's constitutional right to have an abortion?
Face-Off is a project of the Kansan editorial board. Two editorial board members argue opposing sides of a hot-button issue that affects students at the University of Kansas. This section is designed to help students understand opposing sides of an issue and make informed decisions.
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Readers who have a suggestion for a topic that could be used in Face-Off or wish to join the editorial board, please call Amanda Sears or Lindsay Hanson at 864-4924.
E-mail suggestions to opinion@kansan.com.
PERSPECTIVE
Accusations against government deserve attention, investigation
This is a story you may have heard before. A national landmark was destroyed, the blame resting on foreign terrorists. In its wake, the dominant political party uses public hysteria and the promise of security to pass radical legislation with names such as the "Homeland Security Act," which strips away civil rights and secures an iron-fist control on the nation. The country goes on the offensive, claiming to be securing its safety in declaring war on foreign countries without provocation. The country, not the United States, but Germany, later goes on to start and lose World War II.
Those versed in history may know the landmark to be the Reichstag, a governmental building in Berlin. A Dutch communist was blamed for its burning and the Nazi Party dissuaded investigations leading in other directions.
I am not the first to draw parallels between our situation and Germany's, and there are those who allege that there was government complacency on Sept. 11, 2001. Globalfreepress.com, for example, has put together a report citing evidence from mainstream press supporting its conclusion that Bush knew about the attacks before they happened. It quotes stories from summer of 2001 indicating that American intelligence knew Osama bin Laden was planning massive attacks on the United States, and he had plans to hijack aircraft.
Another pre-Sept. 11 story claims Attorney General John Ashcroft, as of July 2001, had stopped flying on commercial airlines because of a threat assessment by the FBI. This "threat assessment" persuaded him to fly only on leased aircraft. Simultaneously, he deliberately tried to steer the FBI director away from terror and counter-terrorism issues, barely glossing over the topics in a budget request he submitted
COMMENTARY
Sam Lane opinion@kensan.com
The grim picture painted here is one in which the U.S. government knew something like the Sept.11 attacks would happen and allowed them to take place. Germany used "security" from communists and other foreign enemies as an excuse to invade Poland, followed by France and Russia. The United States now has broken away from the United Nations in invading Afghanistan and Iraq.
One of the most important unanswered questions of the World Trade Center attack is why the airliners were not intercepted. Our nation constantly monitors its borders with a blanket of radar that no airliner can escape, and it is standard procedure for fighters to intercept and establish contact with airliners that stray off course. Further, "no-fly zones" are maintained over Washington, D.C., and the World Trade Center towers. It is standard procedure
to intercept anything that flies too close to either location and shoot it down to guard against exactly what happened.
Further, the response that did occur came from Langley Air Force Base, 130 miles from the Pentagon, rather than Andrews Air Force Base only 10 miles away. The Air Force constantly drills to prepare for emergencies like what happened. Fighters should have scrambled as soon as air traffic control noticed the airliners turning around, especially given that they didn't answer radio inquiries.
One Web site, more radical than Globalfreepress.com, alleged that an order was sent to Andrews Air Force Base calling it to stand down after the first tower was struck. This sort of charge seems too strong to take seriously, but it is hard to see any other reason for the Air Force response to have been so woefully inadequate.
The grim picture painted here is one in which the U.S. government knew something like the Sept. 11 attacks would happen and allowed them to take place. Germany used "security" from communists and other foreign enemies as an excuse to invade Poland, followed by France and Russia. The United States now has broken away from the United Nations in invading Afghanistan and Iraq. Some have made note of the coincidence that these oil-rich countries were attacked by an oil-man president and his Enron vice president.
Granted, this picture is one that sounds like something coming from a bunch of conspiracy theorists, but given that there is evidence, such serious accusations cannot be ignored. In the name of justice and democracy we must investigate. To be a patriot is to keep the United States from becoming the next Nazi Germany.
Lane is a Leavenworth senior in psychology.
Looting least of problems
With the shooting phase of the war in Iraq winding down, critics have latched on to the looting of the National Museum in Iraq as a major problem. Iraq is believed to be the home of the oldest civilizations in the world, and the artifacts that were stolen are indeed priceless treasures of our past. However, the widespread condemnations of the looting and subsequent diatribes against the war plan on this basis are, at best, misdirected.
The truth of the matter is that we have just borne witness to one of the cleanest and most humane military operations in the history of warfare. The fact that stories such as this looting and the infamous American flag over the statue of Saddam Hussein have been so widely publicized is in itself a testament to the conduct of the war. The reason we hear about trifles like these is because there have been no major catastrophes. American forces have yet to suffer a defeat on the battlefield, and the people of Iraq have yet to suffer large-scale casualties. To fill the gap, critical pundits lament the loss of museum artifacts.
It begs the question, what should we have done? Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks admitted that the United States did not anticipate the looting, but what if it had? Should we have prioritized the protection of a museum over the lives of Iraqi citizens and our own troops? Should the American soldiers have made a beeline for the National Museum and set up guard there rather than undertaking the capture of the capital city? Surely not. Our priorities were in perfect order. A failure in the war plan would have been to defend a museum while real crimes against humanity took place elsewhere.
Matt Pirotte dissenting
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