First antiquities, now animals
: I’m waiting for someone to scream that we should have guarded the zoo.
15 responses to “First antiquities, now animals”
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I think they tried, but 5 million animals take a lot of protecting.
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And some of them ::: munch, munch ::: are actually ::: munch, munch ::: quite delicious. Can you pass the couscous? Thanks.
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Well if we had planned better, we’d have those animals now to supply our Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, and McDonald’s franchizes.
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Actually, Tony Banks — former Minister for Sports and a local, to me, Member of Parliament for West Ham — called for the Coalition to do their best to protect the zoo from bombing. Looks like we did — same as with the museums. He also urged military leaders “to ensure that Baghdad’s El-Zawra zoo is safeguarded and that when hostilities are over military vets will provide urgent assistance to the zoo and other organizations involved with animal welfare in Iraq.”
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The North Carolina Zoological Society has set up a fund for these animals. Concerned parties can mail donations to:
Aid to Baghdad Zoo
c/o North Carolina Zoological Society
4403 Zoo Parkway
Asheboro, NC 27205
For more information, you can visit their Web site at http://www.nczoo.com.
Updates on the situation will be available at http://www.AZA.org, http://www.nczoo.org and http://www.nczoo.com as information is obtained. -
Mora say! Irak fat USA chain food NO!!
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You wear these chains, puce, not eat them. Grease, lard and oil to you sir.
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Animals, sad to say, are replaceable. Artifacts from the dawn of human history are not.
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Well Dan, you are right. And children mean more than animals. And there are Iraqi orphanages now where children are starving and bereft. But when I saw the pix of those magnificent big cats with their skin hanging off their bones, I had to do something.
If every American with a job just gave $5 measly dollars apiece to an Iraqi relief org of their choice that would be…..what’s 120 million times $5?? -
And I might mention that artifacts “from the dawn of human history” are rather resilient, and being that they are worth a lot of money will eventually turn up somewhere. But a living thing (child, animal, whatever), once dead, can never be replaced.
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From AP: “…the animals’ lives were endangered during the conflict by the placement of an Iraqi gun battery on the zoo’s grounds, opening it to destruction by U.S. military attack.
“The zookeepers fled, leaving the lions, bears, monkeys, camels and other charges without food and water. Since Saddam Hussein’s regime was toppled, the zoo has been looted. U.S. troops have been feeding some animals from their rations.”
US troops, Iraqi locals, and Kuwait have been feeding and watering the animals. More aid is on the way. It would be hard to blame anyone but person who placed the gun battery at the zoo, the looters and maybe the zookeepers who fled. These animals will soon have more food and healthcare aid than the average un-insured American. -
Everything we read about the Saddamites and the Islamists make my contempt for them deepen. But, it goes even deeper than that, doesn’t it? There is a kind of bone-deep stupidity in the Islamic world that’s just breathtaking.
Do you remember the story about Marjan, the one-eyed lion in the Kabul zoo? He was blinded when some idiot threw a hand grenade into his cage. The reason the idiot did this was because his brother had been killed by the lion. The reason his brother was killed by the lion was because he stupidly climbed into the cage and tried to challenge the lion, who, being a lion, swatted the human interloper and killed him. So his brother took revenge by tossing a grenade into the lion’s cage. Yes, took revenge against a wild creature that had been aggressed against and reacted as nature decreed.
You can’t make this stuff up.
I cannot understand the kind of idiocy which is rife in the Islamic world. It boggles all sense. -
The mullahs prefer it that way, Diana. But, while killing and maiming each other is perhaps a lunatics’ right, inflicting such ignorance on nature’s more noble creations only proves how far these freaks need to crawl before becoming human themselves. More bombs, please.
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Actually, according to this article on CNN (http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/04/20/sprj.nitop.zoo/index.html), the soldiers DID guard the zoo: “After the soldiers took the zoo and park, they had to leave for one night to continue the fight. During that time, the zoo, like much of Baghdad, was looted.
The cages were torn open, and birds, goats, and anything that wouldn’t bite back had escaped or was stolen.”
Unfortunately, as with the museum, they were still fighting and probably had no idea that the level of desperation in Baghdad would motivate the citizens to liberate/eat/destroy their cultural resources. I’m speaking for those who weren’t professional thieves, of course…
As for the museum, which certainly is a tragedy, the laws of war covering its protection are as follows:
“Territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army.
The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised.
The authority of the legitimate power having in fact passed into the hands of the occupant, the latter shall take all the measures in his power to restore, and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety, while respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country.” (www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/lawofwar/hague04.htm)
This came from Wikipedia.org: “In the months preceding the invasion, starting in December and January, various antiquities experts, including representatives from the American Council for Cultural Policy asked the Pentagon and the U.K. government to ensure the museum’s safety from both combat and looting. No promises were made, though U.S. forces did avoid bombing the site.”
So…did we do everything we could? I think we did, and still are. -
Whatever happens, the people with negative attitudes find a way to spin it to make America look bad. As one earlier commentor noted, it is thanks to the Coalition commitment to limiting strikes to military targets that the zoo isn’t a smoking hole in the ground right now. Same for the Museum.
War is hell. Thanks to modern American ingenuity and vision, it can be less hell than it used to be. But it’s still hell.
