re: #258 lawhawk

This sucks royally. According to Reuters and a state archeologist, looters broke into the Cairo Museum and destroyed two mummies.

Terrible. Can’t figure out who would do this or why. Mummies as symbols of quasi-monarchical authority over Egyptians? They’re not even representational art like the Bamiyan Buddhas were; there’s no reason for radical Islamists to destroy them.

The looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, and Donald Rumsfeld shrugging and saying “Democracy is messy. Things happen,” is to me still the most enraging moment of the entire botched enterprise that was the Iraq invasion, summing up all the arrogance and stupidity of that administration. If you let chaos descend in a great city, yes, things happen.

I hope that the Cairo Museum won’t suffer the fate of the Baghdad Museum. If it does, it won’t really be comforting that it isn’t our fault this time.