Baghdad to New Orleans: When all is in chaos, who loots museums?
Watching the television pictures of looters in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, I couldn’t help but remember the looting in Baghdad in April 2003.
Remember all the fuss about the looting of the Iraq National Museum as American Marines and soldiers ousted Saddam Hussein from power?
There’s looting now in New Orleans. Are they looting the New Orleans Museum of Art? Are they looting the D-Day Museum in New Orleans? We haven’t heard a word about it.
Stealing statues? Why no news on the New Orleans museums? My guess is, it’s not because the cameras can’t get there. It’s because museums really are the last places you’d expect looters to go during a crisis.
When their lives are on the line, and the whole world seems in chaos, what kind of criminal goes to a museum to steal statues and old pottery?
That’s what I thought back in 2003. And as it turned out, I was right. The world’s news media were tricked into reporting 80 to 100 percent of the Iraq museum’s artifacts had been looted. Months later, we discovered that no more than 3.1 percent of the artifacts had been stolen.
The bigger mission. Some of those Iraq antiquities were taken in looting, some in an inside-job burglary. The thefts happened over two or three days as U.S. troops were battling Saddam’s soldiers, some of whom had set up sniper’s nests at the museum itself.
The point is, U.S. troops had to allow a little looting while they protected themselves from those snipers and completed their much bigger mission, the removal of a totalitarian dictatorship.
Over the last few days, New Orleans police found themselves with a choice that helps clarify the Baghdad episode. They could rescue city residents in danger of dying, or they could run after looters stealing TV sets.
Priority on lives. On National Public Radio yesterday, one reporter explained why most police were ignoring the looters in New Orleans. She said, "The priority now is saving lives." Funny how NPR didn’t see it that way in Baghdad.
Frank Warner
Sept. 7 Update: Despite rumors to the contrary, the D-Day Museum does not appear to have been looted. The 40 museums in New Orleans took some damage, but most valuable exhibits appear to be safe. For more information, click here.
Sept 8 Update: The American Association of Museums now reports the D-Day Museum is "unmolested," but a separate storage area for the museum gift shop was damaged and "entered."
Sept. 9 Update: NBC’s Tom Brokaw, in New Orleans on Sept. 9, said the gift shop had been looted, and some D-Day Museum computers also were taken. Brokaw didn’t make clear which building held the computers, but he said all historical pieces in the museum are intact.
Sept. 11 Update: A D-Day Museum spokeswoman told me the museum has a little wind damage. She also said the museum staff is fine, but several have lost their homes.
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