The Great Sorting Out

Violence is latent in Iraq, but with forethought and goodwill retired general Jay Garner and the several hundred other American officials of the newly formed Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance should be able to contain and defang it. The initial outburst of looting in Iraqi cities has struck some as an unwelcome surprise. But looting happens in war, and even more in the vacuum created by the collapse of a totalitarian regime.

Everyone was looting in Germany in 1945, including from art collections and museums. In Yeltsin’s Russia, everyone knew Communism had stolen so much from them that they felt impelled to take back anything they could, by whatever means. Saddam Hussein stole the whole of Iraq, and the looters are also only trying to lay hands on a little of their own. Why, as a war correspondent in the Six Day War of 1967, I took from a Syrian trench a copy of Balzac’s Père Goriot in Russian, presumably abandoned by a Soviet adviser.

About the Author

David Pryce-Jones

David Pryce-Jones (1936–2025) was a British author and commentator and served as a senior editor of National Review.

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Violence is latent in Iraq, but with forethought and goodwill retired general Jay Garner and the several hundred other American officials of the newly formed Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance should be able to contain and defang it. The initial outburst of looting in Iraqi cities has struck some as an unwelcome surprise. But looting happens in war, and even more in the vacuum created by the collapse of a totalitarian regime.

Everyone was looting in Germany in 1945, including from art collections and museums. In Yeltsin’s Russia, everyone knew Communism had stolen so much from them that they felt impelled to take back anything they could, by whatever means. Saddam Hussein stole the whole of Iraq, and the looters are also only trying to lay hands on a little of their own. Why, as a war correspondent in the Six Day War of 1967, I took from a Syrian trench a copy of Balzac’s Père Goriot in Russian, presumably abandoned by a Soviet adviser.