ISTANBUL: In aiming to disarm Iraq and bring a regime change, The Mother of All Battles-II is also ravaging the cradle of Western civilization.
A bomb from a Tornado may fall on Adam and Eve’s Garden of Eden. Or the birthplace of Abraham.
It was in the very place where thousands of “sorties” now rain “smart bombs” that the world probably found its first form of writing (cuneiform). Cultivated crops, canals, dams, irrigation and animal husbandry originated in what was known as the Fertile Crescent between the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers. The rivers the coalition forces are heading to cross on way to Baghdad.
Greek thinkers drew inspiration from the mathematicians, astronomers and philosophers of Mesopotamia, the land that is now Iraq.
Night becomes day in Baghdad in the flashes of bombs, day feels like night under the thick black smoke over Baghdad. But it was there that day was divided into 24 hours, the hour into 60 minutes and a circle into 360 degrees. And it was here that algebra and geometry were developed.
Armoured personnel carriers now roam the area. It was in Mesopotamia that the idea of a vehicle on four wheels originated. Smart bombs are the product of current precision technology, but the first measuring and surveying instruments date back to Mesopotamia.
But so does the principle of “an eye for an eye”. The death penalty was decreed for contractors whose buildings collapsed and killed anyone in the thriving city-state of Babylon around 700 BC. No one in Iraq will be punished now when buildings collapse like a deck of cards under American bombs.
If surgeons are forgiven now for failure to take proper care in a war situation, in Babylon they were held responsible for what could be considered the origin of “malpractice”.
Mesopotamia gave us the first metal working, architecture, city building, urban planning, legal system, medical writings, cobblestone streets, pottery and even beer, about 6,000 years ago.
It is from here that civilization spread to Greece, to Rome and then on to the rest of Europe and the Orient. All of Iraq is considered an archaeological site. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon remain among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
“Violent ‘regime change’, invasions, wars, revolts and massacres have been a way of life for 6,000 years in Mesopotamia,” says Kit Miniclier, a US observer of the Middle East.—Dawn/InterPress News Service.
