Iraq National Library and Archives: Death of Memory

The National Library and Archives in Iraq is a truly sad story that humanity in general should be ashamed about. Libraries are, in my view meant to be apolitical places in which one can, with limited inhibition strive to meet their curiosity, inquire into the fulfillment of knowledge. They are places that can be refuge both from worldly disorder and chaos and an escape to pleasures of the mind. The destruction of INLA is cause to be mortified. Those events have been recounted in various details, all of them are disturbing. The rebuilding of the library's collection is an ongoing project that is meeting many difficulties. Recently the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, a Conservative think tank, obtained millions of documents, many of which detailing the Baathists regime and Saddam Hussein's dealings within the state of Iraq as well as with foreign dignitaries, most notably his lunch with Donald Rumsfeld. These documents need to be returned to Iraq as soon as possible. They are rightfully Iraq's documents, a part, aspect of Iraq's tumultuous history, a history that needs to be studied and retold. We are only now becoming aware of the atrocities committed by the former regime as well as foreign influences on that same regime.
In relation to this, is the destruction of variable monuments, posters, etc. of Saddam. I'm not a member of fedayeen Saddam but these artifacts are apart of the historical memory of his 30 odd years in power. We can not tell the future but what we can do is study the past and come to better understandings of history. To do this though, we need to keep every piece of information that is possible. Looting and burning of statues, posters, ephemera does nothing but display barbarous acts of indecent assault and confirm the dire state of humanity. Every piece of historical significance that is destroyed amounts to the destruction of historical memory that is necessary to progress and in achieving enlightenment. This may sound trite but when historians, anthropologists, etc. go to libraries, archives, and other repositories of information these are the sources they are seeking, these are the sources that enable stories and histories to told and retold. Human memory alone is not enough to recount events, for context needs to be displayed as much as possible. In order to that sources need to be retained.
It is sad to see Iraq still in turmoil. Inshallah some day in the near future Iraq and Iraqis will be able to live their lives as they wish without foreign intervention of any kind, without sectarian violence ripping the country apart and most of all with sources still intact so that her troubled story can be retold.