When Isis destroy ancient monuments, it’s not always true that ‘people are more important’

Perhaps we need censorship. The Isis vandals now destroying the greatest sites in ancient Mesopotamia have no care for history, so why do they bother? The answer is to get publicity. As with beheadings, they want to taunt us with their outrages. So why give them what they want, which is our obvious dismay? Why encourage more destruction?

To read of the loss of ancient monuments is heartbreaking. When they date from the dawn of western civilisation in the Mesopotamian valley, the pain is the greater. Nimrud, Hatra and Nineveh are 6,000-year-old bedrocks of our culture. Like the smashed statues in Mosul museum, their destruction tears at the roots of Eurasia’s shared identity. That identity may stay recorded in books, pictures, museums. But the continuity of place is lost. The narrative is snapped.

Many will say, so what? In peace and war, we are constantly told that people should take precedence over things. I have spent my life trying to save beautiful buildings, streets, towns, woods and fields from those who, usually with a profit in mind, claim that ‘people are more important’. They are, and they are not.

I am sure we could save lives by not conserving the past and spending money elsewhere. The bomb, the crudest weapon of war, always justifies its devastation as ‘saving lives’. So does torture. But a sign of civilised people is that they balance the short-term interest of one generation against the values enshrined in the past, and against the right of future generations to share that past. Since the dawn of time, confident communities have treasured their history. That is why Isis leaves us horrified.

Of course blame lies with the perpetrators of horror. But this madness was unleashed a decade ago by those harbingers of anarchy, George Bush and Tony Blair.