Statues and Statues, Durham and Mosul

For a week or so we have been hearing all manner of discussion about the tearing down of statues to Confederate generals across various states in the South.  And that brings up all manner of discussion, much of which misses the point.

Actually, it isn't clear what the biggest "point" is.  But there is one that dominates everything.  And that is that whether statues go up or statues go down needs to be an orderly process, managed appropriately by the local government entity under which they were approved to go up in the first place.

If a town put up a statue, then the town -- its elected and appointed representatives -- need to be the ones to decide to take it down.  It cannot be allowed to be done by an unelected mob of rioters committing vandalism on the community.  When places I once lived, like Durham, NC, which had a statue just pulled down, do not have their police force immediately stop the vandalism, and then arrest and jail the participants, it is sanctioning the violence.

You want to debate whether those statues should come down?  Hey, have at it, and I'll happily join in because I'm sure I'll have an opinion of some kind.  I may even be inclined to agree with you.  But I will have a principle, i.e., that, for the most part, we should think twice before we second-guess the decisions made by communities 125 years ago.

As far as Confederate generals go, if they served their cause -- the Confederacy -- honorably, well, having a statue in a town that was actually in the Confederacy is recording the history of that town.  If it wanted to honor what it regarded as brave soldiers when the statue was put up, by memorializing their general in granite, well, let the town properly decide, in an orderly way, what to do.

But let me remind you of this, from a piece I wrote a while back:

In case you hadn't seen anything on this story, our friends in ISIS this week destroyed statues in the city of Mosul, Iraq.  They included ancient Assyrian and Akkadian artifacts from as far back as the 7th Century B.C.; according to the article referenced, the wonderful people from ISIS condemned the artifacts, since they were "worshiped instead of Allah."  Of course, Mohamed didn't even get born for another thousand years, but what the heck.  As one of the brain surgeons noted while pickaxing away, "We were ordered by our prophet to take down idols and destroy them, and the companions of the prophet did this after this time, when they conquered countries ..."

At what point do the rioters and vandals in Durham meld gracelessly but smoothly into ISIS members and sympathizers?  I would contend that there is essentially no difference whatsoever.  A mob not representing the properly-voiced wishes of the community chooses, on its own, to destroy historical artifacts that were created at a time when people felt differently from the mob members.  Whether the artifacts were created in 1886 or 655 B.C., their destruction by a group who took things into their own hands rather than going through the local order is a travesty.  This is America, not ISIS-land.

The Durham rioters should have been regarded the same way.  They were ISIS, tearing down historical construction because it didn't align with their world-view.  No difference at all.

Except that this isn't Mosul, Iraq, where the nation is immensely fragmented and the national government is not the most stable one, even as it tries to fight off the threat from ISIS in its north, and its Shi'ite older brother Iran tries to dominate it as well.  This is the USA, with Federal, state and local governments that are stable, even in California (yes, you can be stable and still be stupid).

What is even more ironic is that the other extremists, the neo-Nazis who dominated the news reporting of the rioting in Charlottesville, Virginia during a protest of the planned removal of a statue there -- their effort was exemplified by a domestic terrorist who used a speeding car as a murder weapon -- same as was done by ISIS in Barcelona Thursday, and in Nice, France and too many et ceteras to date.

So we have the amazing juxtaposition of the two extremes in the same set of events -- the leftist radicals destroying historical artifacts and the neo-Nazi white supremacists murdering with motor vehicles -- both using tactics that have come to us from ISIS.  They must be so proud, and so must the leaders of ISIS that are left.

As I write this, four people have been subsequently arrested in Durham (note -- not at the time of the riot) and supposedly there will be more, as identifications from video at the time are made.  I will be interested if the city and/or county, whichever jurisdiction applies, gets appropriately tough with these people.  I will be interested to see if they consider them morally equivalent to the ISIS clowns who destroyed the Assyrian and Akkadian artifacts.

And I will be interested if the city decides to replace the statue -- and, if so, with what.  And if the community actually get to provide some input there.

Because history can't really be destroyed, as long as we remember it.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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