Killing both people and culture in Iraq

[NNN0LHI]

http://kennebecjournal.mainetoday.com/view/columns/3684771.html



<snip>But more than just lives were destroyed in Monday's suicide bombing at the legendary Baghdad book market, where books were sold from inside a warren of shops as well as outside on the ancient streets. One bystander told a reporter from the BBC that "pieces of flesh and the remains of books were scattered everywhere."

Take a moment to let that image sink in. snip

For it captured the absolute tragedy that we are witnessing: the destruction in Iraq of not only a people and the possibility that they will come together as a nation, but also a culture. Baghdad's library -- which held ancient Ottoman documents and priceless historical volumes -- was looted long ago (in an event that prompted then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's famous remark, "Freedom is untidy.").

The national museum met the same fate.

And now, the booksellers' market has been attacked, where not only Shiites but also Sunnis sold books side by side, drank tea, entertained visitors, discussed politics and matters of great and little import and generally led as normal a life as possible in the midst of bloody chaos.

Culture is meaningful; it is the civilizing part of human experience that separates us from the rest of the animals on earth. And when you destroy both culture and life, there is nothing left.

[katsy]

1. Tragedy upon tragedy.

This bears repeating:

"Culture is meaningful; it is the civilizing part of human experience that separates us from the rest of the animals on earth. And when you destroy both culture and life, there is nothing left."

The tragedy is that those who control both the money and power at the top do not understand this. Culture is meaningless to them and they prefer a flat earth where the rest of us are either consumers to enrich them, cannon fodder or potential collateral damage in their quest for more money and power.

Culture based on anything other than the all powerful consumer culture is anathema to the power elite.