A Cause for Legitimate Concern

In the wake of the U.S. Senate's Foreign Relations Committee passage of a bill “to protect and preserve international cultural property at risk due to political instability, armed conflict, or natural and other disasters, and for other purposes”, Wayne Sayles warns:

"I cannot fathom the thinking that pervades Washington but I know that it is not the thinking that made this country what it has been until the most recent decade. The great American Dream is in serious jeopardy" ("Funding Terrorism" Thursday, January 28, 2016).

This is a result of the yellow journalism fostered by academia and their surrogates that the collector market for antiquities is funding terrorism, and ISIS/ISIL in particular. Every thinking American ought to give some serious thought to the circumstances under which this has come to pass and the inability of the collector and representatives of the market to make the voice of reason heard.

Couched within this appeal for egalitarian protection of the past is a blatant and disgustingly sub-rosa agenda pushed incessantly by academia and especially the Archaeological community. It's a pure and simple power grab that elected representatives of the American public (many of whom know little or nothing about archaeology) have endorsed for reasons that are quite unclear but undoubtedly political. 

The situation in Syria and Iraq is deplorable, but is not going to be resolved by yellow journalism or poorly conceived import restrictions.