-By Warner Todd Huston
Remember when we invaded Iraq and the western news media went wild because one of Iraq’s museums was broken into and looted during the fighting? It was proof of how evil the USA was, if you’ll recall. But now museums in Egypt have been looted during the unrest there and, lo and behold, the media remains silent over it all.
Imagine that, right?
I guess looting of museums is only bad when the USA is somehow involved.
Back in 2003 when US forces were investing Baghdad, Iraq, many decried the looting of the museum there. It was idiotically termed the US “waging war against history and culture.”
It turned out, of course, that while some items were lost and the museum itself was damaged, the truth is most of the museum’s artifacts were taken away and stored in safety by the museum’s curators. They ended up not missing at all.
So, the haters of the US were liars… again.
This time we can only hope that the protesters in Egypt were no more successful than the thieves back in Iraq in 2003.
The Associated Press has a few photos of the destruction by looters showing empty cases and broken glass. One image shows an ancient statue broken and lying on its side.
Still, let’s hope that museum curators and/or the Egyptian military secured some of these antiquities before the mob came calling.
These museums have been looted during unrest in Egypt before, though. Here is some video from back in 2011 of the Egyptian army entering a museum and setting up posts to prevent more looting.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, MrConservative.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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