In Baghdad last week, Iraqi citizens provided the international press with the "Kodak moment" of the war. After an American soldier covered the head of an enormous Saddam Hussein statue with an American flag, Iraqis helped topple the statue into the liberated streets of their capital.
While this inspiring scene occurred above ground, something far less picturesque and far more tragic was going on below ground.
As the administration and American media celebrated the seizing and liberation of Baghdad, looters ransacked and pillaged Baghdad's government and cultural buildings, including the National Museum of Antiquities. In just under 48 hours, more than 170,000 of the world's most important Middle-Eastern artifacts had disappeared or been destroyed.
Though the recent portrayal of Iraq in the news has largely focused on its captivity under the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein and its vast fields of crude oil, we must not forget that it is also a historical birthplace of civilization.
Modern Iraq is on the land where ancient Mesopotamia once rested: the fertile delta of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Iraq's cultural dossier includes the Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Muslims and Parthians.
Burial treasures, precious metals and art from over 10,000 archaeological sites in Iraq were once meticulously recorded and culled in one museum devastated last week.
Among the historical artifacts stolen from Iraq's National Museum were a Uruk vase and carving (the first known examples of representational sculpture and depiction of ritual), as well a set of cuneiform tablets that may have contained the missing elements of the epic of Gilgamesh.
The Pentagon cannot claim ignorance of this comprehensive and invaluable store of historical treasure in Iraq. Beginning in January, scholars from across the country met with Pentagon officials and advised them on the significance of the Iraqi museums and the importance of their preservation during a possible invasion.
According to The Washington Post, "The Archaeological Institute of America called on 'all governments' to protect cultural sites during an expected conflict."
Numerous Iraqi archaeologists and curators working in the museum sought out American troops to help arrest the rampant ransacking as it occurred, but the only attempt at military intervention was some marines who fired warning shots for about 30 minutes on one occasion.
When asked about the looting on "Meet the Press," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wrote off the irrevocable loss of world history to what happens when you go from a dictatorship to a new regime. "We don't allow bad things to happen," he continued. "Bad things happen in life, and people do loot."
Saying that the United States does not allow bad things to happen is not only a transparent and syrupy public relations lie, but an insult to every soldier, civilian, family member and museum curator - on both sides of the conflict - who has felt the loss or suffering that grew out of the "bad things" in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Moreover, people do loot, but they often stop looting when tanks and armed military forces in the area make a point of telling them to stop.
The fact is that with the rapid stabilization of the Baghdad invasion and liberation, the Pentagon had both the forewarning and the military capacity and control to contain looters. Without question, this should have been done.
To a country like the United States, with a national history of just over 200 years, the losses suffered by Iraq's archeological sites and museums may seem inconsequential, perhaps even trivial.
After all, the construction and trumpeting of our country's brief history often came at the cost of deliberately decimating layers of history already here, the most dramatic illustration being the cruel and systematic marginalizing of American Indians.
This "erase and rewrite" mode of drafting history, while it has brought us imperial success, has led, this week, to over 5,500 years of irreparable erasure. The United States is a teenage country with an invincibility complex. But even teenagers must learn the value of the past.
Raid Abdul Ridhar Muhammad, an Iraqi archaeologist, perhaps said it most eloquently: "A country's identity, its value and civilization resides in its history," he told a New York Times reporter through tears.
"If a country's civilization is looted, as ours has been here, its history ends. Please tell this to President Bush. Please remind him that he promised to liberate the Iraqi people, but that this is not a liberation this is a humiliation," he told a New York Times reporter.
Humiliation and permanent loss, not only for archaeologists and Iraqis, but for all world citizens. Without conscientious and concerted efforts to preserve history while imparting freedom, liberty will sound out not only like bells, but also like shattering glass, sledgehammers and crackling flames.
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Katie Petersen is an English and biology junior. Reach her at katie.petersen@asu.edu.
