Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about the fallacy of electing an outsider. Unfortunately I chose to use Senator David Perdue as an example of a business person and outsider who promised change if elected and whom, I proposed, had produced little meaningful legislation in his first 16 months.
Well as so often the case in Washington, I find myself forced to “walk back” that indictment of an outsider. Today I received a press release advising the world that Senator Perdue was an original co-sponsor of legislation, signed today by President Obama, that prevents ISIS from selling the artifacts that they have looted from the territory they now control.
“ISIS is raiding the cradle of civilization—destroying cultural property and selling artifacts on the black market—to help fund its reign of terror and purge the Middle East of non-Islamic history. Similar crimes have been committed throughout history, and the United States has led international efforts to protect cultural property and heritage. I am glad we were able to come together and stem the flow of money to ISIS by preventing these terrorists and their networks from selling stolen antiquities to anyone in the United States.”
I suspect that ISIS will now be forced to return their plunder to the rightful owners and I seek absolution of my sin of the premature judging of outsiders. Given the context here I suspect a tawba is more appropriate than 10 Hail Marys.
About Author
IrishPat
Patrick Malone is a Business Advisor and Leadership Mentor headquartered in Blairsville, Georgia. He co-hosts Mountain Daybreak and Mountain Mornings, weekday news programs, and hosts This Week in Blairsville a weekend program on WJUL/WJRB. He is a mentor in Union County High School, serves on his church council and writes a monthly column on leadership in the animal healthcare industry.
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This law actually will help back track artifacts to the accounts and money havens ISIS uses. It might seem minor, but remember Al Capone didn’t end up in jail as a organizer of mass shootings and domestic terrorism…
Bipartisanship! Maybe working together actually works!
“RINO georgiapol.com posts article titled in foreign language”
Can it technically be a foreign language in no county official uses it?
Only if you’re Protestant. Is this better?
“Mia kulpo , tra mia kulpo , tra miaj plej doloriga kulpo…”
All real Republicans know that Esperanto is only used for NPR broadcasts
Stating the obvious ISIS will not be returning anything but any citizen buying an artifact will have an issue.
This may not be important to many but it is significant.
I guess I don’t understand this.
Surely it’s already illegal to buy stuff from ISIS?
Surely it’s already illegal to buy stolen antiquities?
How does another law prevent something that is happening on the black market?
Even if they can’t sell them here, wouldn’t they just sell them somewhere else? And if they are going to be sold anyway, wouldn’t we rather they come here than go elsewhere?
If ISIS can’t sell things won’t they likely destroy them?
All I can think of is the Animal House quote that Dave Bearse used here a month or so back on a different subject.
“I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.”
It is also dismaying that we can only get a consensus in DC making something that is already illegal doubly so.
Hey, making thinks doubly so is what won the war on drugs.
My bet is the long list of antiquities interests signing this letter to the Senators are a bit more knowledgable than those taking an ignorant shot at Perdue.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/rdcms-aaa/files/production/public/S1887_LETTER.pdf
Well from my point of view, it’s no more of a shot at Perdue than it is at Obama. I tried to find out more about how it was expected to work but info is very scarce.
Not out of ignorance at all as I actually went and read the act, now law, as written before making comment. Not a shot at Perdue either but Congress in general while I grant you that isn’t much for sport. Though truth be told this is hardly a major accomplishment on his part or for Congress. It really is only lip service and for the most part just reiterates other laws. The only addition is that it empowers the executive branch to further restrict antiquities out of Syria and generate reports back to Congress. This is almost impossible as the joint hasn’t always been called Syria and most of the antiquities ISIL is not interested in keeping or destroying are pre-Islam. Many peoples have been there or in control in the past and uncatalogued items from Roman, Hellenistic, Babylonian, even Assyrian eras can easily be passed off as coming from areas other than modern day Syria. Catalogued items from museums would have to be sold on the black market regardless of this law and rest assured that very few pieces that ISIL would be able to get their hands on are uncatalogued.
I’m probably more sympathetic to the wishes of the museums, archaeologists, anthropologists, etc. than many others and the destruction of historic sites. They hardly ever want to see antiquities going into private hands however many past discoveries would not have been made without private funding. We hardly paid attention when Baghdad and other Iraqi museums were looted when we invaded them. This law started in the House referencing antiquities from anywhere in the world facing conflict. This grew to include pieces being sold because of man-made environmental causes and then eventually through the sausage grinder to this almost meaningless extra restriction on “Syrian” artifacts.