Yeah, but they have power tools, earth moving equipment & HE now.

  In the 70s,the Shah said to the Saudi King - Faisal I believe but it may have been Khalid,I forget but it's irrelevant anyway - something like:  "you need to allow discos and girls to wear mini-skirts;you have to change with the times and allow freedom and expression or else you will be deposed". The King told him "you are forgetting that you aren't the king of France,you rule a nation of Muslims".

I used to think it was sort of a raw deal when colonial powers absconded with historical artifacts.  Hell, the British Museum is literally full of stuff like that.

Now, the more that I think about it, screw it.  We should have brought that stuff home from Mosul ourselves, and if the Iraqis complained, offered them a discount on museum admission.

This.  

I couldn't think of a COC compliant way of saying it.  Thank you ATL.

Fucking savages.


Completely irreplaceable treasures.




They weren't even smart enough to try to sell them.

They do the same thing to ancient Muslim artifacts that apparently aren't Muslim enough.



Attacking history is an attack on knowledge and civilization. They are the lowest form of trash. These scum should be exterminated.

And the Shah paid for his sins against Allah (though not enough many would argue).

We are, Barry wants to let a shit ton of Syrian "refugees" in.




Oh, you meant the history stuff. Nevermind

The Islamic world eventually got their comeuppance.  When the Mongols destroyed Bahgdad in 1258 they also destroyed the House of Wisdom, which was every bit as sophisticated as the Library at Alexandria.  Historians say the water ran black with ink from the 400,000 manuscripts the Mongols threw into the river.  IT set back mathematics, chemistry, and who knows what else five hundred years.  To put it into retrospect, in the 1940's archaeologists discovered a primitive ancient battery in Bagdhad.  A lot of modern inventions were probably already invented and we don't know about it..

The difference is, we don't have a president trying to defend the Mongols as being a peace loving people...

And people still complain about the British holdings.

Video dropped by Youtube, against policy



 

He is being strategically patient.

I saw the video on FOX News showing these primitives breaking up statues but I also noticed that when the statues broke apart, they were lined with rebar.

I'm thinking these were copies of the antiquities as the ancients didn't work with rebar. I could be mistaken though. I'm old, but not that old.

Still waiting for "Fearless Leader" to begin Arc Light raids on ISIS. Gonna be a long wait, I'm thinkin'.

FBHO

Hindsight nothing.  Egypt wants their stuff back, Greece wants their stuff back, I say "no" - they cannot be trusted to protect it.  Hell, if we (the Brits) give Greece back the Elgin Marbles the new gov't would probably sell them off to pay for social programs / 'justice'.  Fuck those guys.

Barbarians. We should nuke them!

Neutron bombs

By "gloss over", what do you mean exactly?  Many of the incidents you mention prove the point.  

Iran-Iraq War - remember Iraq was essentially our friend in that.  Iraq was balancing Iran as a regional power.  And, obviously, it was over in '88.

First Gulf War - perfect successful example of containment and limited war.   George HW Bush the dad was frankly a foreign policy expert, not so much the son.      

All the stuff in red: Again, Saddam was not a nice guy.  Ironically he wanted his neighbors to believe he had nukes, and it backfired (i.e.: we believed it).    The people behind the invasion - like Wolfovitz - support American intervention overseas, Paul Wolfowitz also supported Clinton's involvement is Bosnia.  A lot of supposed intellectuals on the left (Fareed Zakaria, example) also supported Bosnia AND the Iraq invasion.   Even assuming our motives were not ideologically driven (the neocons) then it was simply a massive intelligence blunder, i.e.: still a blunder.  

"Dude had to go" is not a reason and being a brutal dictator is not the same as not providing stability.  All you have to do is ask yourself if the Middle East is less or more stable after our actions.  And by "our actions" I mean both Bush's blunders and Obama's blunders.   The problem is not left or right, it's arrogance and having blind faith in American intervention basically anywhere we want.   We need to go back to things like the Weinburger doctrine (REPUBLICAN SECDEF) and go to war when it makes sense and with clear, achievable aims.

Only slightly less destructive than a standard nuke.

How the Neutron Bomb Works

But fuck it, that would teach those dirty bastards to burn books and destroy monuments. Nuke them!!!

Not really interested in the people, only the relics.  I've already posted my proposal for dealing with the problem.  Thank you for the link however

They don't value human life...what makes you think they value historic relics?

I don't think he was interested in destroying the art so much as amassing all of the european artwork he could find in order to boost the prestige of the "Thousand-Year" Reich by possessing this art in his museums.

The "Baghdad Battery" was, with as much certainty as can ever be had with these things, not a battery. It was almost certainly a holder for scrolls. In fact, apart from the addition of an outer clay pot, it is identical to other known and proven examples of scroll holders.



 

Actually, they did go after a lot of art to destroy it because Hitler considered it deginerate.

Coming soon to a museum in Dearborn MI.

Just like Obama is destroying the Constitution....

Yeah... it was mostly just outright theft.

Yeah.

At least we have pictures now, unlike in the past when they pillaged.

The first official acts of a Screechjet Administration would be the RRW and a new neutron bomb.

We've got to take Syria.

I said, right at the start of the civil war in Syria, that we needed to pro-active, that we needed to make sure "our chosen people" were on the ground and armed to the teeth to prevail.  Instead, we put our heads in the sand and now here we are. The only solution now is to conquer Syria.

Republican candidates like Scott Walker will not say that, because they have no balls and are not honest brokers.  The simple fact is that if you want to stop ISIS before they strike here in the USA you need to take Syria. Otherwise, you can take Iraq back and they'll just wait for you leave or for Iraqi forces to diminish before they come striking back from their Syrian safe havens.

Syria has to be taken now and the only way it can be taken is through conventional US invasion.

You and seven other Americans, plus four Europeans, are up for this course of action. It's a political non-starter.

Too bad we didn't do it when the other Arabs willing.

I'm sorry, how many millennia did it take the "mighty Mohammed" to crush these false idols with his fists? Idiots.

I did not know Lindsey Graham was on ARFCOM.  We won the Cold War with the possibility of nuclear destruction facing us every day, and now we have to go fly off to perpetual war because of a handful of crazy goat fuckers.  I mean, damn - could foreign policy get any more incompetent?   CNN is blathering on this morning about "Four Canadian Teenagers" joining ISIS.  I know it's part of a broader trend, but damn.   If my sworn enemy is four cannuck teenagers, I'm not feeling that bad.

Being rebuilt piece by piece!

Let's tease apart your statement.

Let's talk about the vulnerability of Western societies to internal subversion, the dynamics of MAD with state vs. non-state actors, the ability of foreign terror networks to recruit disaffected populations, and the internal weakness of core MENA states.

Is IS not a serious threat on ANY of those rubrics?

There is NOTHING sacred to these monsters...............NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!

And yet, Obongo defends them.

You make valid credible points.  Let's take them in turn,without writing a book in comments.  

Red stuff: Yes, we are vulnerable to internal subversion.   Having said that it has been over-hyped in the past (it was during the cold war certainly) and it is overhyped now. We don't need to throw away privacy and civil rights - to deal with ME terrorism - and if you simply look at numbers and military capability the people we are facing are not that kind of EXISTENTIAL threat.  They ARE a threat at some level, and I'm surprised a shopping mall has not been massacred yet.     It's a philosophical point but we would be better off if our leaders reinforced what is special about the West. Our own moral leadership is utterly lacking.  

Nukes (green) - without a doubt your best point.  There's a lot in here, but if ISIS gets a nuke the game changes - but that is something we should be able to avoid. our actions so far have only made it more possible.

(orange) Disaffected populations - yes, they can recruit from dissaffected populations. Although funny how the ISIS leaders are not 'disaffected'.   Closely relates to the next one.  

(Blue) Internal weakness of MENA states:  This is really where the arguments for intervention (your argument) fail, frankly.  If you are concerned about the internal weaknesses of MENA states, then why favor policies that make them weaker?  The supposition is that MENA states are internally weak and corrupt / they are going to fall anyway so let's get ahead of the curve.  But they were not really falling before the Obama and Bush administrations.    It's circular: we've done things to weaken ME states (the last 15 years), they are weak, so let's invade some more and make them weaker.   Same with the "Arab spring" - it's very anecdotal, but talk to educated, secular Egyptians.   Nobody liked Qadafi, but now thanks to the west Libya is a terrorist shithole.  In Egpyt itself Mubarak basically said "Yes, the country must move to more freedoms and I will leave after a transition"  But oh no, we knew better, that wasn't fast enough.  The result was one more, less stable government.          

The better strategy would have been a long, calculated strategy of engagement and  -yes - diplomacy where we would ensured that secular states are strong, but gradually transition to more open societies.  Of course, using military force where needed.  Our actual policy has been a failure and more of the same won't help.  

Compared to their usual antics, this rates about a -2 on a scale to 10.

They would usher in a new Dark Age.  What next?  Burn the libraries?  

Did iraq ever have a tourist industry?

An unrelenting blight on civilization.

The rest of the world doesn't care one iota.  Not even the residents or neighboring countries.  If they did, they would be doing something about it.  It is not our axe to grind.  We can help, but go it alone?  No way.

Islamist have been doing that kind of $%^* for a long time.

Remember the Buddist Statues in Afaganistan?

Oh........that's right..........they blew them to $^*#.

Aloha, Mark

ISIS is harvesting organs but didn't think to put these timeless treasures up for sale.    

ISIS needs to be destroyed.

cant we just nuke them yet and be done with it for a couple hundred years?

 
There are areas near the khotamea shrine in Western Baghdad that I'd go back to.