Sherry Chandler

Babylon

So many things to mourn about this war-of-choice we’re waging in Iraq. Not least, the losses to our common cultural heritage. This from today’s NYTimes:

BABYLON, Iraq — In this ancient city, it is hard to tell what are ruins and what’s just ruined.

Crumbling brick buildings, some 2,500 years old, look like smashed sand castles at the beach.

Famous sites, like the Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens, are swallowed up by river reeds.

Signs of military occupation are everywhere, including trenches, bullet casings, shiny coils of razor wire and blast walls stamped, “This side Scud protection.”

Babylon, the mud-brick city with the million-dollar name, has paid the price of war. It has been ransacked, looted, torn up, paved over, neglected and roughly occupied. Archaeologists said American soldiers even used soil thick with priceless artifacts to stuff sandbags.

But Iraqi leaders and United Nations officials are not giving up on it. They are working assiduously to restore Babylon, home to one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and turn it into a cultural center and possibly even an Iraqi theme park.

….

Emad Lafta al-Bayati, Hilla’s mayor, has big plans for Babylon. “I want restaurants, gift shops, long parking lots,” he said.

God willing, he added, maybe even a Holiday Inn.

A theme park? We will have destroyed Babylon to replace it with Disneyland?

I know I’m sort of ivory-tower in my thinking but this article goes on to say that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is pumping millions of dollars into protecting and restoring Babylon in the hopes that cultural tourism will be Iraq’s second largest source of income, assuming peace is eventually restored. But I can’t imagine wanting to trek all the way to Babylon to find it looking just like Orlando. Nor do I want to be able to buy a Big Mac there.

So in addition to the obvious downsides to this war in Iraq, there is the less obvious one of making it into a mirror image of ourselves.

But even a Holiday Inn would be an improvement over this:

Donny George, head of Iraq’s board of antiquities, said that Polish troops dug trenches through an ancient temple and that American contractors paved over ruins to make a helicopter landing pad.

“How are we supposed to get rid of the helipad now?” Mr. George asked. “With jackhammers? Can you imagine taking a jackhammer to the remains of one of the most important cities in the history of mankind? I mean, come on, this is Babylon.”

…

American marines stormed up the Euphrates River valley on their way to Baghdad and turned Saddam Hill into a base. Their graffiti is still scrawled on the walls, including, “Hi Vanessa. I love you. From Saddam’s palace” and “Cruz chillen’ in Saddam’s spot.”

But more serious than that, archaeologists said, was the use of heavy equipment, like helicopters and armored vehicles, which may have pulverized fragile ruins just below the surface.

Mr. George, who was Mr. Hussein’s field director for Babylon in 1986, said he remembered once scraping a few inches beneath the topsoil and unearthing a “wonderful little plate.”

“So just imagine what we have lost,” he said.

To be fair, ours is not the only depredation. Colonial powers such as Germany, France, and Turkey have taken artifacts away (as also happened in Greece). Post-war looters took away more. And Saddam built himself a pseudo-palace on top of Nebuchadnezzar’s. But he’s the bad guy. We’re supposed to be the forces of good. We might not have been able to stop our troops from leaving graffiti — the modern day Kilroy sez “Cruz chillen’ in Saddam’s spot” — but surely we could have found another place for our helipad.

Possibly related posts:

Donny George has left Iraq

Wanton Destruction? Incompetence?

“amped on pure hatred and fundamentalist Islam”

Holiday Book Signing

The National Museum in Baghdad

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.