Luis Acosta writes “This Washington Post commentary by Princeton historian Robert Darnton compares the burning of Iraq’s National Library to the destruction of other great libraries throughout history, including the burning by the British Army of the Library of Congress in 1814.
“Libraries and museums are not temples for ancestor worship, but they are crucial for the task of knowing who you are by knowing who you were. That kind of knowledge must be continuously reworked. Destroy the possibility of replenishing it, and you can strangle a civilization.”
“How will the Iraqis fuse a national identity out of the diverse cultures that have come apart with the destruction that has robbed them of their common past?”
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