Once attending Elizabeth Stone, Ph.D. archaeology graduate classes,
and studying Harvard University's Dr. Starr's excavations at Nuzi,
near Kirkuk, Iraq (and the Mosul oil fields and 3rd century Catholic
Christians) I feel a general malaise over the multi-national
occupation of the "Fertile Crescent" between the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers without any apparent consultation with experts such as the
recently deceased Clifford Geertz, who conducted field work in two
largely Islamic cultures, Morocco and Indonesia. If a similar
"multi-national" board of archaeologists and anthropologists (i.e.,
who have studied the Kurds I also have to read) had been convened and
procedures put in place for protecting international archaeological
and people resources, perhaps the level of violence would be lower
there.