Threats about cultural sites spin the world backward
Trump’s tweets recall Iraqi museum looting
weeks before at the Pentagon. He had been confident that the situation regarding the National Museum was understood at the highest levels.
But war is messy, confusing and unpredictable. Damage was done nonetheless. Gibson was so angry at what had just happened he could barely discuss it with me.
As things turned out, it wasn’t so much a matter of direct destruction: museums in the business of preservation need services, like security guards and alarm systems, climate control and electrical power. Once those things are knocked out, museums are vulnerable to exhibits walking out the door and disappearing into the shadowy world of the private trafficking of antiquities.
I wrote about the issue. My mailbox filled up with readers saying, in essence if sometimes less politely, that collateral damage is a part of any war. The broader goals of that conflict, it was said, rightly usurped the concerns at the Oriental Institute. You are focusing on the trivial, I was told. But even in their castigation, many of those readers expressed regret at what had happened to the museum. It was, many said, a shame.
The issue came roaring back on Jan. 4, when President Donald Trump, tweeted that the U.S. “had targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture.”
This was something entirely different from what had been posited in 2003. The fate of the National Museum of Iraq was inarguably avoidable, but it had not been intentionally targeted. Trump’s tweet, though, appeared to be a barbaric and most likely illegal threat to do precisely that.
Iran, like Iraq, has many ancient treasures and sites, from the Armenian Monastery of St. Thaddeus to, perhaps most notably, a grand palatial complex dating back to the sixth century B.C. To a lot of historians and art critics, many of whom voiced their dismay, or announced their resignations, over the last few days, it sounded like Trump was threatening to bomb Persepolis.
The world may only spin forward. But that tweeted pronouncement was difficult to see as human progress. Whatever your politics. Really. Whatever your politics.
How far we have sunk in so few years.
For one thing, the tweet conflated the current Iranian regime with Iranian culture in some vague and general sense.
While Persepolis surely is important to the many Iranians who support their government, Iran has been many things at many times. Tehran was a very different city not so long ago. It could be a different city again.
To threaten sites that reflect that country’s complicated past — indeed, our shared human past — actually is counterproductive to current U.S. aims in the region. To find the past often can mean finding freedom in its complexity. These sites actually link Iran to the international academic community, which in turn can lead to a more sympathetic hearing for treaties and democratic imperatives. A shared veneration thereof actually is a force for peace.
When we feel our country is being disrespected to its core, we tend to lash out at the perceived aggressor. If, on the other hand, we feel that our cultural heritage is respected, we’re more willing to look critically at ourselves in the present. This simple truth is being forgotten, on both the left and the right. The diminished amount of acknowledged respect is behind many of our problems, both foreign and domestic. This is yet another manifestation of the global shortage of empathy.
Sure, Trump was engaging in his strategically rash rhetorical threats. Bullying realpolitik. Scorched earth arbitrage designed to provoke a reaction. And it is worth noting that ISIS, the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, destroyed ancient buildings in those nations, especially between 2014 and 2017. That is not a comparison to be enjoyed.
First, Trump’s spokespeople walked back the implications of the tweet and, although he first had doubled down on his threats in post-tweet comments to reporters, by Tuesday Trump seemed even to walk it back himself. Perhaps he knew he had gone too far. Perhaps the State Department got through. Perhaps media criticism stung. Perhaps he expected everyone to know that this was speech, not action.
If you are an optimist, you would see the events of the week as proof that safeguards still exist in our democracy. If you’re a pessimist, or maybe a realist, you will be breathing a sigh of relief and then worrying about what happens next. To breach what seemed like a firm line always puts other lines at risk. The year 2003, it has turned out, was a very different era. Who could have anticipated what has happened since?
And Wilson? She has retired. But not as a scholar who cares about ancient Iran. “It has been an appalling week,” she said when I reached her. “Deeply distressing.”