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The Destruction of Iraq's Once-Great Universities
Harperdog writes "Hugh Gusterson has written a devastating article about what has happened to Iraq's once great university system, and puts most of the blame for its total collapse on the U.S. Quoting: 'While American troops guarded the Ministries of Oil and the Interior but ignored cultural heritage sites, looters ransacked the universities. For example, the entire library collections at the University of Baghdad's College of Arts and at the University of Basra were destroyed. The Washington Post's Rajiv Chandresekara described the scene at Mustansiriya University in 2003: "By April 12, the campus of yellow-brick buildings and grassy courtyards was stripped of its books, computers, lab equipment and desks. Even electrical wiring was pulled from the walls. What was not stolen was set ablaze, sending dark smoke billowing over the capital that day."'"
.. I guess you can't blame the looters.. I mean no-one wan looking, so it's like they WANTED all their shit stolen, right?
How about we blame the looters first?
Can we be surprised? After all, if Iraq did not have, nor was a threat to our (Western) cheap oil, we would not have cared about what happened there.
Even in videogames, you can not develop technology to attack or defend your virtual community without taking care of the essentials for your population first: making sure they are fed, clothed, housed, and educated.
The Iraqi universities are not the only victims of a failure to recognize the importance of these social pillars.
The First Nations of Canada have many communities where even those basic needs are not properly managed and delivered to the people.
Heck, the whole COUNTRY of Canada suffers from a government which places an emphasis on imprisoning people for growing plants that the majority of the population wants to see legalized, taxed, and regulated in poll after poll.
Without an educated and comfortable population, a nation has no hope of competing on the global market and being a "real player." Education creates jobs, it creates technology, and it improves the processes of business and society. Even people like Marx recognized that society would evolve into a "communist" or "socialist" state as the people became educated and concerned about more than their own personal needs. (Marx never espoused a revolution such as Russia or China had; he was merely discussing where he saw society evolving to.)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
FTFA "Armed militias threatened women who did not cover themselves and intimidated professors who said things they did not like"
Americans did not loot / destroy the Universities, the religious Iraqi's who did not like women/minorities being educated that destroyed them. Iraq today makes enough money from oil to re-build any college / university that is wishes, but it chooses not to.
Iran and the Iraqi's that follow them are much more to blame for the aftermath mess.
Would this have happened if the USA didn't started this illegal war over some oil? If the anwser is NO (and it is) then we should blame those money-hungry, trigger happy, backward idiots. Those responsible and those who supported it should be brought to justice in The Hague, just like any other warcriminal. But unfortunally our EU goverment are all bought up by those criminals and would rather eat their own kids than do what is right.
u.s. invaded, removed iraqi military and police. u.s. army took over in their place.
it was their responsibility to protect those cultural heritages. instead, they protected fucking oil fields.
a few pieces from those museums could buy years' worth of output from any given oil well. they were that important.
Read radical news here
It's all a matter of priorities. And like water and power systems, there really wasn't much profit to be made from universities.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Read the Geneva Conventions if you don't believe me.
Like the Convention Against Torture, those are very handy for us to use for convicting the petty thugs running penny-ante countries when we catch them.
However, they don't apply to the USA. Or won't, anyway, until some other country has the power to apply them to us.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I hate the military as much as anybody, but I don't think it's fair to take it out on the soldiers. I think most people don't really understand what they're getting into when they sign up. They sign up thinking they'll be fighting bad-guys, not blowing up innocent children to further some political agenda (or shuffling around paper-work and doing dishes, which is often the case too).
Then once they're in they try to make the best of a bad situation. There are sociopaths in the military (the same as you would find anywhere) but I don't think it's the standard. And it's very telling that the military heavily supports Ron Paul. Obviously they don't like being overseas blowing up innocent women and children, or they would support one of the chichen-hawk warmongers instead.
Mainly Naomi Klein, who is known for just making stuff up as she goes along. ... Maybe the current situation is as good as it can get. The US went in there to prevent Iraq from being a pain in the butt and I think it helped. It's a shame we cannot keep people from each other's throats but even the US isn't powerful enough to do that everywhere on the globe, so yeah. Reality sucks.
Seriously though, the primary thing to blame for the end of Iraq's universities is Islam, because it was what fuelled the anger of the looters (against the un-Islamic curricula and against the education of women), because it is what makes Iraq inhospitable to science now and because it is what is preventing the Iraqi government from funding the building of new ones even though there's plenty of oil money available.
The only thing the US can be blamed for is naïveté. At least the military top and the administration had this attidude of "muslims are just like us, except they call God Allah". This is also why things turned out so shitty when the US didn't keep the oppressive military rule in place and why Iraq's democratic project is coming apart at the seams. Most of Iraq's problems were essentially caused by the US top refusing to do their homework before they went in.
Then again, the only way to prevent all this would have been to institute a tight (and expensive) military rule followed by a thorough (and expensive) re-education program. I can see the headlines now.
Of course it does. Take away the system that keeps the a-holes doing what they would really want to do, i.e. they don't give a damn about others, take want to take what they want but normally can't because they'd get caught quickly by the police.
Looting is what will happen, everywhere, in the USA. or Europe, or wherever. Just look at what happens with floods for example.
So the USA destroyed the infrastructure of power, thereby they enabled the looting. The USA is responsible.
Btw. this reminded me of something I wanted to say about a story, not long ago on slashdot, about being able to recognize serial killers. I didn't get round to writing it down then, so I will do it now: When I read that, I thought how pathetic this research was, because there are so much bigger problems that these people don't analyse at all. Esp. that a sociopath like George Wanker Bush, who was unbelievably actually elected to power by people in the USA (really? Why did anyone vote for this a-hole? I knew he was scum the first time I saw him talk on TV), and did thousands of times more damage and caused thousands of times more deaths (together with his sociapath cronies, but as the president has so much power in the US, he is responsible).
Why don't psychologists go analysing people in politics and say 'he is a sociopath and should be barred from being in any position in power'?
No, Iraq is worse off now than it was under Saddam. At least under Saddam there was security, basic services, good access to health care, and one of the best education systems in the middle east.
I'm not glorifying the bastard mind you, there were political kidnappings, executions and torture under Saddam. But this hasn't stopped, far from it, there has been an increase in political and ethnic violence, as well as corruption.
In other words, it's better to live under the rule of a ruthless dictator than it is to be "liberated" by the US.
Yes.
The Arab-Muslim world has the highest rates of illiteracy on Earth. Like everything else, the Arabs will of course blame that on America and the Jews, rather than taking a long hard look at themselves.
Some have even suggested that it was on purpose.
Nah, that would require some sort of planning.
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity or whatever the expression is.
No sig today...
why were those u.s. troops there in the first place, you fucking idiot ?
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2653923&cid=38925893
so, you can just invade a country, take over its army and police, and then just leave it schools, museums, hospitals, universities unguarded ?
and you have a 4 digit userid too ! one would think that you would actually be a person who would have some amount of brain power - and hence, as it should be - some amount of accompanying culture.
yet you dont.
lets say at the time you got your uid, you didnt have the proper broad vision and humane understanding that every member of modern society should have. alright. happens. we all were young at one point.
and yet, close to a decade passed since you possibly got that uid. you were on the internet all the time, taking into account that you are geek, to have taken that uid from this site that long ago.
and yet, you have stayed still in the place you were in terms of culture, uttering the above bullshit to us at this point in 2012. ...........
either die out, and get the fuck out of this planet, or, move forward. alternatively you can just shut the fuck up.
Read radical news here
Look who were targetted by the West ?
Saddam Hussein
Muammar Gaddafi
What kind of countries these guys were controlling?
Iraq and Libya - both countries were considered as "Modernized Islamic Countries" because they allow the women to do drive, to work, to do most things men were allowed to do
Why the West targeted Iraq and Libya?
You may not believe in conspiracy theories but there is suspicion that the West doesn't really want the Islamic countries to become modernized
True, both Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were despicable despots. Both of them killed their own people.
But then, please tell me which Middle East leader never treat their own people like shit and/or being tyrannical ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity or whatever the expression is.
Hanlon's Razor is a nice idea, but I think that you think rather naively. The US went into Iraq with three real agenda's. 1) Make headlines in the press which was going to cause the United States public to ignore the fact that their economy was going down the gurgler and that their banking sector was in dire woes. 2) Seize some semblance of control over Iraq's oilfields with the intention of trying to rebuild the infrastructure by US corporations even though it was destroyed by US soldiers and 3) Cause instability in the Middle East which will provide further opportunities for "western interests" centered in the US and it's allies to rebuild and profit from industry that is destroyed in the following turmoil.
While I often find the actions of many western governments inept, especially those of the recent US government, I would be very much a fool if I did not think that they did indeed have a very purposeful goal. They may indeed be acting stupidly and seemingly against their own interests in the resulting outcomes, but I would certainly not put it down to a lack of malice. These people act according to their own interests and have utterly no care in the world for the outcomes of others.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
We are so quick to condemn the US based on the words of politicians but I sometimes wonder if we can glean the truth from the events.
One September 11, 2001 the U.S. suffered it's most devastating and deadly attack in history. With the death of over 3,000 U.S. civilians and the destruction of property that will likely never see it's equal, Americans faced an enemy they could not easily identify knowing only their approximate (financial, political, support) origin. The question of the new era was how to fight an enemy without a country, without a standing army. How do you fight an enemy so ruthless that they will slaughter innocent men, women and children without warning and without regard to their own destruction?
America's response was simple. They invaded the lands of their enemies. The politicians spoke of weapons and camps and funding but the words of politicians are for sheep. Their actions spoke to the enemy. They destroyed armies, killed the leaders of nations and their families and left behind the smoking ruins of two nations as a message to a people never truly swayed by the words of American politicians. "If you attack us, we will lay waste to you. We will destroy your armies, we will destroy your government and we will destroy your past and we will destroy your future. We don't care who among you truly did it. We are sending a message to you all, this is what happens when we are attacked. Consider this while you wonder who among you is next."
And so America continues to fight a war on two fronts. Politically it insists that it is the world's policeman enforcing justice that mirrors its own enlightened legal system while militarily it responds to the threats of the new world in a way that it believes the new world can understand, ruthlessly, selfishly and decisively. At home, the only place America truly cares about, the words of the politicians sooth those want to be soothed. Others see the actions of the military for what they are, revenge and warning. The rest continue to rail against the U.S. because they have some misplaced and completely unfounded belief that their elected leaders words should somehow match their actions. Over 200 years of history has taught them nothing. The words of politicians are for sheep and the actions of the military, like all great military, are ultimately for destruction.
Becuase they play ball.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Some [wikipedia.org] have even suggested that it was on purpose.
...
Seriously though, the primary thing to blame for the end of Iraq's universities is Islam.
This is a good opportunity to put Occam's razor to use. We know that in sudden, widespread disruptive events people loot. It doesn't matter whether it is natural disaster, invasion, or just a neighborhood breakdown in public order. This even includes ordinary people who would not ordinarily steal. I once talked to an anthropologist whose work on a Caribbean island was interrupted by an unusually powerful hurricane. There was looting, but several days later many people sheepishly returned things they'd stolen, unable to explain why they'd taken them in the panic.
Looting is probably an instinctive human response to the rapid onset of environmental or social disorder. But we don't have to accept that. We only have to accept that disasters cause looting. Introducing the hypothetical intellectual backwardness of Islam simply multiplies causes unnecessarily. The looting would have occurred whether or not Islam was as you characterize it. The looting is neither proof nor disproof of your notions about Islam. Your notions of Islam have no bearing on the looting, even if you had actual evidence (which you don't) of the motivations of the crowd.
Now as for the looting of important cultural institutions being an intended consequence, Occam's razor applies here as well. The administration's general lack of preparation or even awareness of basic facts about Iraq that was evident in the aftermath of the invasion. That is enough to explain the lack of steps to protect universities and libraries. To suggest that was part of the invasion suggests an awareness of the importance of intellectual inquiry that was not otherwise evidenced in any of the administration's other behavior. This was a president who proudly said he made decisions by gut instead of reason, as if that were an admirable thing. It is more plausible that it never occurred to the Bush Administration that a country like Iraq *had* important cultural institutions .
It really makes no difference whether the looting was an intended consequence or not -- either practically or ethically. Undertaking drastic, irreversible actions fatal to so many is not excused by ignorance. Doing that in unexamined ignorance is arguably worse than causing many of the things that happened after the invasion intentionally. Arguably somebody who *wanted* those things would have to be sick. Somebody who is just intellectually lazy deserves no pity. The uncaring deserve less pity than the honestly depraved.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Has everyone forgotten that the goal of the Iraq war was to get access to their oil?
How does that make sense? Before the war, we could buy their oil. After the war, we could buy their oil. How did the war change anything about that? How was it supposed to?
Sometimes it seem like people keep repeating these brain-dead slogans, and never stop to think if they make any sense.
Seriously though, the primary thing to blame for the end of Iraq's universities is Islam, because it was what fuelled the anger of the looters (against the un-Islamic curricula and against the education of women), because it is what makes Iraq inhospitable to science now and because it is what is preventing the Iraqi government from funding the building of new ones even though there's plenty of oil money available.
"Islam" might be an OK explanation in a country like Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia, but note that as recently as the 1970s Iraq was a mostly secular country. The war with Iran (which we encouraged) and our wars and sanctions helped *feed* religious extremism in the country. Not saying it's our fault, but even if we didn't light the fire we were throwing gasoline on everything...
We know that in sudden, widespread disruptive events people loot.
Like the Japanese at Fukushima? Not.
They loot libraries?
Well, sure. It's not like people sit down and ask themselves, "what are the highest value places for me to loot today?" It's an instinctive behavior. The anthropologist I mentioned said that people were often mystified by the things they took, because they had no use or practical value.
I think looting libraries makes more sense if you look at the behavior in terms of its statistical benefit to a displaced population (i.e. like you were in charge of natural selection). If your goal is to have as many people in a community survive, you don't want them all hunting for the same optimal loot to take. You want everyone to go straight to the nearest thing of value and carry it off. They can sort it out later, there will be more diverse loot, and you won't have a lot redundant effort with everyone looting the same few things.
It's also possible that in a fight or flight situation, grabbing stuff is a low marginal cost addition to flight that occasionally pays off. That would be consistent with the way looting follows in the *wake* of the disaster. Imagine a village being attacked in a cattle raid. In the early stages they grab their weapons and secure their valuables. If they lose the fight, in the later stages of the raid (i.e. the looting and raping stage) it makes sense for the losers to grab anything they can and run away.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
1. Afghanistan is not at the center of the Islamic world
The center of the Islamic world is in the Middle East.
Afghanistan is situated at the peripheral, not only geographically but also in terms of influence
2. What happened in Afghanistan that led to the invasion by America (and the West) is Omar, the leader of Taliban, permitted Osama bin Laden to use Afghanistan as a base for Al Queda, and Al Queda, for one reason or another, decided to launch 9/11 on America because America is nothing but a pussy.
Before Al Queda, before 9/11, America never touch Afghanistan. In fact, America (and the West) aided the Taliban (among other Mujahideen groups) in their rebel against the former USSR.
3. About Libya,
Please do not delude yourself that Gaddafi was removed by the "Libyan rebels" alone.
The world saw what happened there and we all know who was doing what.
Those "Libyan rebels" were nothing without the help from the Western powers.
And please do respect the intellect of other Slashdot users - please do not substitute "The Western Power" with "UN Forces"
Thank you !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I've noticed that in America, only the poor people seem to get morbidly obese. It might have something to do with cheap food being no good for you.
We know that in sudden, widespread disruptive events people loot. It doesn't matter whether it is natural disaster, invasion, or just a neighborhood breakdown in public order.
I am sorry but that is a false assertion. It is not a human condition, it is a societal condition. Almost all cultures, mine included, have the idea of "get what you can any way you can get it". They hold the individual above all else. In effect most people are anarchists held in check by laws and controls. When those laws and controls weaken the anarchy comes out. If in one's mind the only thing that stops one from taking someone else's property is the law then when the law can not be enforced one will take it. One the other hand, if the reason one does not take something is the simple fact that it does not belong to you is a different issue. The presence or absence of law enforcement does not change that criteria and one would not take the item in either condition. It has nothing to do with society but with one's individual view of the world.
There is at least one society on earth where that is not anarchist at heart. When a disaster happened there was no looting, no rioting and the people obeyed what little authority that was there. That society was Japan during the last tsunami.
Another point is that I am a human and would never loot and hoard. I may recouver resources necessary for survival but I would use them to help as many people as possible and not hoard them as most looters do.
In the end it is all about the lack of personal honour, personal responsibility, personal control and a reliance on the state to keep one's caveman instincts in check. Japan has evolved beyond that. In those aspect I wish that my society had as well.
This is utter bullshit. The US decided to disband the Iraqi police force and military, then refused to provide security against looters or criminals because the invasion force was undermanned. Remember the LA riots? Imagine that except we got rid of the police and National Guard, then left the armories open so any moron could walk off with a bazooka. There would be instant chaos even if no one was Muslim.
The fall of Iraq was caused by the rank stupidity of the Paul Wolfowitz types.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
The word "looting" covers a number of different things, from organized pillaging to pure mob behavior. Your description of looter behavior corresponds to pillaging, not the mob response to disaster.
All small point about Occam's razor. It's about not introducing explanations without being forced to do so by data. So far as I can see there are no features or cluster of features here that could only be explained by assuming Muslims hate education. In fact, I've never seen *any* evidence that Muslims in general hate education in general. I haven't even seen proof that Muslim *extremists* hate western education in particular. They're often western educated themselves. Their beef with us obviously isn't entirely rational, so we can't expect them to be consistent, but it seems mostly to be related issues of disrespecting Islam, political hypocrisy, hobnobbing with hated regimes, and moral decadence.
The US can't be held responsible for stuff everything the population chooses to do there.
I agree. But I think the US can be held responsible for the reasonably foreseeable consequences of its actions in Iraq, whether or not the people in charge actually foresaw them. If you don't think people are responsible for the foreseeable and controllable consequences of their actions, then you and I are using different.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Again it is simply not true there was *no* looting in Japan after earthquake and tsunami. There was but it was eclipsed in the news by the enormity of the natural disaster and the nuclear situation. The authorities moved quickly and efficiently to stop the looting before it became a secondary disaster.
Another point is that I am a human and would never loot and hoard.
I hope so, but you can't really credibly make that claim until you've found yourself in the kind of situation where people loot. But in all probability you won't loot. So far as I know I can't think of any instance of looting where *most* of the people in the population were involved.
As for myself, I am certain that I am less likely to loot than some, and reasonably confident I'm less likely than most. However, I'm far from certain I would *never* loot under *any* circumstances, no matter how desperate, fearful or angry I got. Haven't *you* ever done or said something under the influence of anger or fear that you would not have after sober consideration? If so, you're a better human being than I am, or indeed any that I have ever met.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Has the irony anvil hit you on the head yet? In a thread thick with ridiculous generalizations about Islam and Arab countries, with (as of this writing) no contributions from people who might actually live there or have lived there (partially, but only partial, credit for having been deployed there) we get the voice of "expertise" based on limited experience pointed back to Americans - and you balk.
Two problems:
1. Most of them didn't want to get rid of Saddam, they just wanted a better way of life, just like in case of Arab Spring. He may have been oppressive, but Maliki and his cohorts make Saddam look like a mother Theresa.
2. What the country was rid of was power structure and infrastructure. Once that is gone, it doesn't matter what source country originally was. It can be Iraq, Russia, USA, France or any other. Without those two things the country will slide into chaos, anarchy and eventual civil war which will decide who gets to form the new power structure in the country and how that power structure will function.
Again, at that point, it will not matter which country it was. This is the cold reality of the human nature, shown throughout history countless times, and one of the things that truly unites our species as one species, in spite of differences in morphology and culture.