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Old 11-15-2009, 07:45 AM
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Myths of Babylon

Reports that U.S. soldiers damaged Iraqi antiquities turn out to have been media hype.

By MELIK KAYLAN

Whatever other mistakes were made in Iraq, it certainly didn't help the cause of peace that the U.S. and its coalition partners were routinely blamed for the destruction of Iraq's heritage—from allowing the National Museum in Baghdad to be overrun by looters, to neglect of sundry archeological sites, including the most revered ancient site of Babylon.

Today, after extensive recovery efforts, the National Museum is again open to the public, with the majority of its greatest treasures back on display. Moreover, we've long known that much of the pillaging had already occurred in Saddam's time, along with the substitution of fakes for many objects. Many of the museum's most valuable items were locked away in a vault, untouched by looters.

As for the ancient sites, a June 2008 trip by top Western archeologists to southern Iraq's eight most important sites found little or no post-Saddam damage, much to the archeologists' surprise. The trip included the two leading critics of American conduct, Elizabeth Stone from Stony Brook University and John Curtis, head of the British Museum's Middle East Department. They did not visit Babylon in the north, but the places they saw covered a full fifth of the entire landmass of Iraq—all relatively undamaged.

Throughout the bloodiest war years, reports had mounted of depredations to ancient Babylon by coalition forces. Mr. Curtis emerged as the single most persistent source of such accusations. Considering the authority of his position and the incendiary potential of his public statements, it was reasonable to assume he was certain of the facts before he spoke out.

A Jan. 15, 2005, BBC report, for example, began with the following statement: "Coalition forces in Iraq have caused irreparable damage to the ancient city of Babylon, the British Museum says." It continued with such details as "sandbags have been filled with precious archeological fragments and 2,600 year old paving stones have been crushed by tanks," and that long trenches were dug "through archeological deposits."

Mr. Curtis's accusations piled up over the years with added details such as the purported damage from a nearby coalition helicopter base that allegedly caused cracks in the animal bas-reliefs on Babylon's original walls. Finally, at the British Museum, he mounted a five-month-long exhibition that closed this past March, titled "Babylon Myth and Reality."

Its final room chronicled the depredations to Babylon in recent years. Here he belatedly began to acknowledge that Saddam himself had already caused grievous harm to the site in various ways—by building a palace at its heart, by ineptly renovating ancient remains, by deploying a tank regiment there, and the like.

In July of this year he authored an official Unesco report with Ms. Stone and others on the state of the site with much the same content. Not surprisingly, it resulted in numerous media reports blaming the U.S. for the destruction of ancient Babylon. One memorable Boston Globe story began, "Iraq's US-led invaders inflicted serious damage on Babylon, driving heavy machinery over sacred paths, bulldozing hilltops, and digging trenches through one of the world's greatest archeological sites."

Neither the report's authors nor those in the media who repeated their accusations, it seems, bothered to read Emilio Marrero's memoir "A Quiet Reality" published this April by FaithWalk, nor attempted to contact him.

As chaplain of the Marine Expeditionary Force that first secured Babylon from looters during the Marines' three-month stint there in 2003, he records how they worked conscientiously to protect the site, ejecting looters, undertaking repairs to the perimeter and establishing ground rules for the war's duration. Chaplain Marrero saw the site immediately after Saddam's forces evacuated. It was in poor condition then.

In recently reviewing the Unesco report, which came out after his book, Chaplain Marrero said to me that the cracks in the ancient bas-reliefs were already there when the U.S. came in. He doesn't believe that the helicopter base could have caused any damage because it was "up to two football fields away." The choppers rose vertically upon lift-off and the ancient remains are located in an excavation considerably below ground level.

The accusations about cracks in the paving stones caused by allied tanks rumbling over the Royal Way don't make sense, he says, because it was already encircled by iron railings with no access to vehicles. A narrow pedestrian path outside the railings barely allowed enough room for light Humvees to drive around to keep the area secure.

Finally, he notes that the Unesco report's details of defensive trenches dug by subsequent occupation forces, such as the Polish troops and defense contractors, occurred in areas beyond what was always considered the site proper, even in Saddam's time. It was in those areas, he says, that sandbags were filled with local earth and the ground leveled.

Typical of the archeologists' maximalist view of conservation, they have never in their accusations discussed the limits of the acreage to be protected outside Babylon or indeed elsewhere. Considering the extent of Iraq's ancient terrain, such zones can be limitless, raising the kind of issues that generate controversies even in other countries between archeologists and, say, developers.

In the context of Iraq though, the archeological fraternity's claims—so long asserted without moderating context or due circumspection—were highly provocative. Since they were the experts, we as laymen depended on them to exercise responsible judgement. One is grateful that they have finally nuanced their position somewhat. But if Chaplain Marrero is correct, it is still too little and certainly very late.

Mr. Kaylan is a columnist for Forbes.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...mEditorialPage
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