Of all the things I don't understand about human nature...

[liralen]

... why anyone ANYONE would loot or destroy a museum or library is just completely and totally beyond me. Even with mob mentalities or whatever the fuck, it just... confounds me.

Hearing that the seven POWs that were rescued Sunday decided that they wanted to stay together, as they'd been through so much together, until they were home, just made me cry. Not totally sure why, but maybe it's just the concept of human relationships that are that strong.

I've been kind of half following, mostly approving of bryant's coverage of the war and his take on it is pretty close to mine. He's a bit more acerbic than I am, but that's good. John and I have been watching about an hour's worth of coverage every evening, even as most people turn away from overload. We still do, even with the hockey playoffs going on.

Jet calls hockey "Owie Game." *giggles* He has Truth.

Comments

Spoils of war.

[tanais.livejournal.com]

>... why anyone ANYONE would loot or destroy a museum or library is just completely and totally beyond me.

Well it looks increasingly like some of the items were very *very* carefully targetted. I suspect art theives using "mob mentality" as a smokescreen. Have a look to history for a precedent -- start with Napoleon and his band of "historians" called the "Savants" in Egypt fast forward to Russian Tsarist ownership of Orthodox artefacts of course Adolf Hitler had very specific cultural items he required be taken from certain cities ad brought to Berlin. Don't be too suprised if some of these artefacts appear in western collections some time... they will however be extremely difficult to sell, which ironically makes the even more desireable to certain buyers.

[bryant]

I think tanais is correct; much of the looting seems to have been planned and targetted. I don't want to speculate about who planned it -- could have been Ba'athists, could have been pro art thieves who smelled a big score six months ago and have been planning ever since. But it does look planned.

Acerbic! I'm hitting the right tone, then. :)

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Okay... so destroying everything they couldn't steal would only make the items that they did manage to get away with all the more valuable.

Bah. Yuck and other such words.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

You *are* hitting the right note. *grin* It's engaging, though I'll admit that some of it is that I agree with pretty much everything you've said, including those apolitical links that you've found as well, it's fun to just follow your coverage.