Baghdadis loot government buildings...a small crowd (and a flock of journalists) prepares to topple a massive Saddam statue in Firdoz Square, with assistance from an American tank... The Baathist regime is finished in Baghad, even if there are still "loyalist" snipers in parts of the capital, as well as diehards in Tikrit and elsewhere in the North...
There are ironies galore in the US armed forces standing aside to permit looting, even at the DGS (secret police) building. Keep in mind that much uglier retribution -- lynchings most likely -- will not be far behind. Who is responsible for public order in Iraq tomorrow?
But it's always fascinating to see a crowd at such a turning point, delirious, unsure of what comes next, teeming, confused, with all the potentiality of a historical moment of flux, in a collaborative act of symbolic demolition. It's so rarely seen. Toppling statues and symbols of former rulers is something human beings need to do -- and it's no, it's not the same thing as iconoclasm or outright vandalism (Banyam, Ayodha). And it's not as ugly as the deaths beforehand or the retribution afterwards. This is Iraq's day, no matter what comes next, and no matter how unwise the war that preceded it.
Demolition as Art: During the Paris Commune uprising of 1870, Gustave Courbet assisted in the demolition of the Vendome Column . It had been erected to commemorate Napoleon's military campaigns and was covered with bronze bas-reliefs cast from Austrian cannon captured at Austerlitz (1805). After the fall of the Commune, Courbet was ordered by a court to pay for its reconstruction. He refused and went into exile in Switzerland until his death (1877).
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There are ironies galore in the US armed forces standing aside to permit looting, even at the DGS (secret police) building. Keep in mind that much uglier retribution -- lynchings most likely -- will not be far behind. Who is responsible for public order in Iraq tomorrow?
But it's always fascinating to see a crowd at such a turning point, delirious, unsure of what comes next, teeming, confused, with all the potentiality of a historical moment of flux, in a collaborative act of symbolic demolition. It's so rarely seen. Toppling statues and symbols of former rulers is something human beings need to do -- and it's no, it's not the same thing as iconoclasm or outright vandalism (Banyam, Ayodha). And it's not as ugly as the deaths beforehand or the retribution afterwards. This is Iraq's day, no matter what comes next, and no matter how unwise the war that preceded it.
- bruno 4-09-2003 7:05 pm
Demolition as Art: During the Paris Commune uprising of 1870, Gustave Courbet assisted in the demolition of the Vendome Column . It had been erected to commemorate Napoleon's military campaigns and was covered with bronze bas-reliefs cast from Austrian cannon captured at Austerlitz (1805). After the fall of the Commune, Courbet was ordered by a court to pay for its reconstruction. He refused and went into exile in Switzerland until his death (1877).
- bruno 4-09-2003 7:33 pm