Was proving the war could be done with fewer troops really worth losing civilization’s history?
War is unpredictable. We all understand that. However, why weren’t more troops allocated to protecting such sites? Looters aren’t hard to deter so adding cultural sites and maybe even a few hospitals wouldn’t be that hard.
As for the whining about it potentially being Baath Party officials. So what? American tanks and troops deter all sorts of bad people–why not deter them? Actually, wouldn’t we want to deter them especially?
Looting of stores and other types of locations was going to happen. There was no way around that. However, we identified key locations for protections such as the oil ministry. If this is for the Iraqi people as the rhetoric has been claiming, there is no excuse to not protect the Iraqi heritage and indeed the world’s heritage. We have the troops and the hardware–why not use them?
The only rational reason why not to do so is that proving a new war strategy is more important than heritage.