The Wonders of Carhenge

This is what I wrote about Carhenge five years ago:

Carhenge. The product of Jim Reinder’s strange and wonderful imagination. Constructed of vintage automobiles sunk into the ground or welded in place, Carhenge was intended as a memorial to Reinder’s father and constructed with the help of 35 relatives on the fifth anniversary of the elder Reinder’s death. A number of other pieces have sprung up around Carhenge, by Reinders and others, creating the Car Art Preserve, a testimony to both the sacred place the car holds in our American culture and to the strange attraction of “elsewhere” that have drawn people to and through the West since the time of Lewis and Clark. Another sculpture–a mid-70s station wagon with arced ribs welded on reminiscent of the ribs of a Conestoga wagon–drives this point home more forcefully: we Americans, for better and for worse (ask the nearest Indian how s/he feels about the whole thing) are a moving people.

I respectfully disagree. So I wrote to Mr. Landsburg.

Mr. Landsburg,

I can’t quite get my head around your “case for looting”. First of all, I don’t think that the comparative extremity of the past several days looting and the past several decades’ kleptocracy (that’s what I’d call it, if I were to call mobs breaking into buildings and stealing stuff “looting”, which I do) [Note: A reference to Landsburg's statement "...if you insist on calling it 'looting'--in which case, I have no idea what word you'd use for the depredations of the old regime..."] have anything much to do with each other, but that’s not important right now. What is important is that, by looking at abstract, generalized definitions of “theft”, you’ve overlooked the specificities of the particular acts of looting that have gone on in Baghdad and the rest of Iraq over the several days. Doing so has kept your argument focused on monetary wealth, which I guess is that basis for your comparison with Saddam’s sticky-fingered reign, but there are other sorts of wealth and value that are greatly diminished by these acts of looting.

The outrage over the current looting has been mainly focused at two particular acts (or sets of acts). The first is the looting of hospitals and theft of beds, medical equipment, and medicines. Although the monetary value of this equipment has not been lost to the total Iraqi system, it has been lost (in the form of replacement price–which is likely to be higher than the actual monetary value of the goods stolen) from Iraq’s already beleaguered hospitals. More importantly, the *use value* of those objects has been lost entirely–stolen medicines and equipment cannot be used to treat sick or injured Iraqis. Even if all the material was returned, most of it would be worthless for medical use, having been out of the controlled environment of the hospital/clinic and potentially contaminated. For a people that are currently living in the middle of a war, this hampering of the medical system represents a great loss, even if, on the other hand, individual looters are able to sell or otherwise use the materials they stole.

The second major source of outrage has been the looting of the Baghdad Museum. A price has been put on the stolen objects of 17 billion dollars. But even if Iraqi looters were somehow able to obtain the full value of these objects–which seems unlikely given their illegitimate possession of these artworks and artifacts, the necessity to work through brokers, smugglers, and other middlemen in getting the objects to market, and the lack of specialized knowledge of the objects by the Iraqi looters–the value that these objects represent to the people of Iraq as a whole, the symbolic value as icons of Iraqi and Muslim history, tradition, and peoplehood, cannot be recovered. Furthermore, as with medical equipment, outside of the controlled environment of the Museum, these objects will rapidly lose even their monetary value, as well as their scientific and historical value. It is not very reasonable to assume that Iraqi looters are capable of caring for these objects, many of them fragile with age, the way the Museum’s curators can. As these objects are mishandled, they will likely suffer from environmental exposure, breakage, wear, and soiling, reducing their value and making some heretofore priceless pieces, worthless.

I fail to see how any of this helps the Iraqi people or, indeed, the world as a whole, although I am sure that the looting of the Museum will at least make art collectors everywhere very happy–when the objects turn up in their neighborhoods, anyway.

As yet, I haven’t gotten any response–it’s only been a couple hours–and I honestly don’t expect one. But I would love to know how Landsburg justifies his argument in light of the clear damage done by looters both to the Iraqi medical system and to Iraqi cultural patrimony.

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Might I suggest, however, that considering the question of how this priceless material might be reinstated to the Museum is a good way of thinking about what a liberated Iraq might look like? Given that nobody in our administration or military seems to have given the matter much thought–or if they have, they certaintly aren’t sharing–maybe this is one way to approach the question. What if post-War Iraq was explicitly designed to facilitate the return of the cultural artifacts and artworks stolen from the Baghdad Museum?

To start with, an amnesty should be declared: anyone can return any object to the Museum with no questions asked and no penalties through a certain date, say May 15. A deadline is crucial–many of the stolen objects are thousands, even tens or hundreds of thousands of years old, and they need constant curatorial care and protection. Also, the hope is to obtain the return of these items before the international collector’s market has time to swoop in. The amnesty is also crucial: although the looters engaged in criminal acts, do we really want the police, particularly “de-Saddamified” Ba’athist police that Iraqi citizens already have cause to distrust, to be responsible for the collection of immensely valuable and fragile antiquities? Likewise for Coalition forces–is it in anyone’s interest for American and British forces to go door to door, searching homes and seizing stolen goods?

To make an amnesty work, however, it is crucial that the Iraqi people believe that the amnesty will be honored–if even one incident occurs in which a looter is arrested or even bullied under the apparent protection of the amnesty, it would completely undermine any hopes of having works returned. But the Iraqi people, having lived for years under Saddam’s heavy-handed police apparatus, are not likely to give this trust willingly. That means that the new government must operate with nothing short of complete transparancy and integrity–no back room deals, no cut corners, recriminations. A South Africa-style reconciliation committee should be set up to allow the peaceful settling of past grievances, where the truly horrifying aspects of the last quarter century can be addressed.

Amnesty is only halfway there, though. In order for an Iraqi person to return the goods s/he has rightfully stolen (and which, after all, are the property of the Iraqi People) the incentive to return it must outwiegh the incentive to keep or sell it. The incentives for return are difficult, ethereal–flat out ideological. They are the contribution to scientific and historical knowledge, the participation in the Iraqi nation, the investment in the Iraqi people. Again, unless a new regime is established that can make these into true incentives for the Iraqi people, they will have no reason to return these goods, amnesty or no. That means meaningful participation by Iraqi leaders empowered to act independently, not a puppet state to American and British corporate interests. Especially as the incentive to sell is so great–many of these objects will fetch enough, even on the black market, to provide security for an Iraqi family for years. After a dozen years of sanction-induced uncertainty–and twice that living under a brutal dictatorship–the security represented by these objects is immense. Which means that the new regime must not only make Iraqi citizen participation a reward in itself, it must also make human security its highest priority. This means a) no politicking with relief missions (even if they’re French), and b) quickly establishing an Iraqi economy that provides for the Iraqi people’s needs. The best way to do this might be to re-nationalize Iraqi oil–Iraqi oil for Iraqi people!–or, at minimum, to establish an Alaska-style dividends program so that Iraqi oil wealth translates directly into Iraqi individual financial security.

All this would have to happen fast, blazingly fast, before the looters have a chance to move their booty onto the international collector’s market. Reform would have to be swift, immediately remunerative, and unimpeachable. Even then, it is unlikely that every object will be returned, but a goodly number might be if Iraqi people felt that it was in their best interests, as citizens of a New Iraq, to do so. And the kind of Iraq it would take to do this is, I hope, the kind of Iraq that well-minded people want for Iraqis. It means a lot of work in not very much time, but that is what we signed on for in this War, and it is what we–and especially the Iraqi people–have every right to expect.

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