September 1, 2006

Of the serial rationales that George W. Bush pushed for his invasion of Iraq, regime change -- "taking out" Saddam and his Baathist government -- was the least pseudo of them all, and probably the one on which he was most intent.

He probably never considered, though, that the blowback from violent regime-change would include the end of Babylon.

No, I don't mean the looting of the Iraq Museum, which the invading U.S. forces seem to have made virtually no effort to prevent in 2003. Nor do I mean the devastation of the ancient site of the city itself, where "coalition" forces established a base and tore up ancient remains with their Humvees and Bradleys. What I refer to is the just-reported decision by Dr. Donny George, the Director of the Baghdad Museum and a much respected authority on the archaeology and ancient history of Iraq, to leave the country, basically in fear of his life now that conservative Shiites linked to the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have been given control of the museum and the Iraqi antiquities department. The news of Dr. George's departure is in and of itself terribly disheartening, for he is highly respected and admired in the archaeological community. His departure portends even greater catastrophe, however, not only for the museum itself but for the future of Iraq's most ancient past.

At most recent count, Iraq contained at least 10,000 mounds (tells, in Arabic) -- the vast majority of them unexplored -- representing the remains of its ancient cultures dating from as early as Neolithic times. These are the sources from which, since the mid-1800s, archaeologists from Iraq and all over the world have recovered the palaces, temples, cemeteries, and thousands of cuneiform tablets that revealed to the modern world the splendor and sophistication of Iraq's ancient past. After the Persian Gulf war of 1991, Iraq's sanction-riddled government lacked funds to ensure the proper preservation and protection of its ancient heritage, and archaeological excavation and research came almost to a standstill. With Bush's invasion of 2003, any bars to the ransacking of that heritage were effectively lifted, and archaeologists who had devoted their careers to its recovery could only read sadly of the tragic looting of the sites of ancient Babylonian cities where they themselves had once excavated, not to mention the devastation of previously unexcavated mounds by treasure-hunting looters equipped with backhoes. Since 2003, those who have hoped to safeguard and preserve Iraq's treasures have been fighting a losing battle against the wholesale dispersion of them via looting and sale on the illegal antiquities market.

Those efforts may now prove to have been pretty much in vain. The Shia conservatives who now control the Iraqi Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities evidently have no regard for the pre-Islamic civilizations of Iraq. This represents in fact the traditional conservative Islamic view, which holds that the era before Islam was one of corruption and barbarous ignorance (in Arabic, the era of jahiliyya) and is therefore not worthy of serious attention or study. From the beginning of Iraq's creation in the 1920s -- and especially in the Baath era -- the Iraqi government reached back into the greatness of Iraq's pre-Islamic civilizations (Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian) as a foundation of pride and unity upon which a new, distinctly Iraqi nationalism could be built that might unify Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs, Kurds, Turkomans, Christians, Jews, Yazidis -- all the different ethnic and religious elements of the new country. Saddam even went as far as to rebuild parts of ancient Babylon, as a symbol of Iraq's ancient greatness as well as his own putative connection to it.

The conservative Shia-dominated government that has emerged in Baghdad now has turned its back on all of this, as part of its rejection of Saddam's and the Baath's Iraqi-nationalist, secularist agenda in favor of an emphasis on an Islamic heritage that, in places like Najaf and Karbala, will spotlight the Shia revival in Iraq and across much of the Middle East, including the rising regional power, Iran. One of the more devastating likely upshots will be the reduction -- or even the elimination -- of efforts to protect the remaining vestiges of the once-great ancient cities of pre-Islamic times, and a probable increase -- even acceptance, if not encouragement -- of looting by locals.

All of this has come courtesy of George Bush's invasion of Iraq, which brought this conservative Shia government to power. We can now add to the costs of that invasion the elimination of an important cultural element that might have helped salvage some sense of Iraqi national unity, at a time when that unity is direly threatened, if not irretrievable. But in the long view of humanity's sojourn on this planet, he may have imposed an even severer price: the lost legacy of several millennia of Iraq's great ancient civilizations.

The Bible to which Mr. Bush professes such great devotion portrays ancient Iraq's great ancient empires as epitomizing the devastation brought by invasion and conquest. The Assyrians sent into oblivion the "Ten Lost Tribes" of Israel, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar swept up the Jews of Jerusalem and brought them captive to Babylon. Arguably at least partly on behalf of the people of the new Israel, Mr. Bush tried to turn the tables by attacking and eliminating the ruler of the new Babylon, Saddam Hussein, and in the process devastated the new Babylon's people in a fashion that the Biblical authors could never have imagined. The empires of the Assyrians and Babylonians, of course, eventually were consigned to the dustbin of history's failures. Centuries (or perhaps only decades) from now, history may find it greatly ironic that the American empire that Mr. Bush tried to extend to Iraq -- in part to protect the people of the new Israel -- joined them there.

John F. Robertson is professor of Middle Eastern history at Central Michigan University. He is currently completing a book, Iraq: A Short History, to be published by OneWorld Publications (Oxford).