“Errors of Omission” by Rebecca Knuth

This article, while not specifically about library history itself, still was a relevant look at a part of the history of preservation and its destruction in Iraq. What exactly are “essential” assets in a nation, and how do those change in times of war? Who gets to make those decisions? It seems that the author, at least, is condemning the Bush administration for their de facto decision that cultural artifacts are not essential to America’s war in Iraq. Simply by omitting libraries and museums from the list of things to be protected during the war, they decided for the world’s history and the people of Iraq which parts of Iraq were worth the most. And like the author, I am ashamed that this is the American government we read about.

My one objection to the article was that at times it seemed to resort to a larger argument against the current administration or conservative forces. While I think she was trying to make a larger argument about extremism and its dangers to cultural heritage, sometimes that idea was lost in the long and saddening descriptions of recent extremist history centering on America.

In the back of my mind, I wondered why, in a nation whose former leader was shown firing weapons in military fatigues, the museum curators and librarians did not defend their buildings with physical force? One of my libertarian streaks involves personal weapon ownership, and I think this would have been one of the very few instances where civilian use of weaponry would have been deemed admissible at least by some of the world of cultural conservators. Why, if the museum and library staffs knew that the U.S. military was not interested in protecting their buildings, did they not protect it themselves? As apostles of culture, why did they stand down at the very moment when they could have defended and saved some of the oldest and most valuable pieces of ancient history? In some ways, I am ashamed that they did not stand against the mobs at their door. Wasn’t that confrontation simply a physical manifestation of their daily struggle as professionals, to fight against anti-preservation forces less physically apparent, like slashed budgets, a general disrespect for history, and attitudes that desecrate most things intellectual? Perhaps I am waxing irrational myself, but I wish, in my mind, that someone had done something during the looting of Iraq.