--- Indigo Nights <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I would suggest that you go back to the original
> question and steer clear of the politics.  Deb, your
> position about this war and its soldiers has been very
> clear.  Not all of us concur with you about the war.
> We respect the soldiers; we do not respect the logic
> behind behing there.  I kind of think the discussion
> has strayed--and if I look back to how it got there,
> Deb, you opened the door to that.

Wait a min, I'm a bit confused here. The thread as I see it is: museum person A
posts about being concerned that returning US soldier will want to donate "war
loot" to his museum and what to do about it. Person B responds and insinuates
that the soldiers will be coming back with stolen artifacts looted from the
museum or other archaeological sites which characterizes soldiers as
opportunistic treasure hunters.

I responded to person B by saying that the US Army has strict regulations about
what the soldiers can bring back and the most they might be able to get away
with is a piece of pottery that they found lying around, as the whole of the
Middle East is littered with pot sherds from all time periods. Other people
responded with more specific examples and did not bring into question the
character of the soldiers at all.

Person C then posts about "trigger-happy" soldiers oppressing the Iraqi people
who'd rather not have them there in the first place. He also posts about people
stealing artifacts at gun point which was a bit vague as to which people he was
talking about but could be taken to mean the trigger-happy soldiers mentioned
in the first paragraph of his post.

I responded to person C to please take that kind of attitude off the list which
was also directed to everyone else. As supposed objective museum professionals,
it's getting old to see people posting such irrelevant strong personal opinions
in response to a question about a museum policy. Whether or not soldiers are
trigger-happy, treasure hunters, or just following orders has no bearing on the
museum policy question and shouldn't have been included in the discussion to
begin with which I tried to point out in my responses. I do apologies if I
wasn't clear enough. I too get a little hot under the collar when I see people
jump to conclusions about a group of people of any type - soldiers, civilians,
or space aliens.

Dave Harvey's post was right on. The purpose behind the thread is not the
character of any one person or group of people but how museums define their
collections policy and ethics. The character of said collectors - public,
private, professional, amateur should not be a part of said discussion.

Deb

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