What is Sauce for the Foreign Goose Should Surely be Sauce for the US Gander

Steven ('Josh') Knerly

At yesterdays' CPAC sitting over the Cambodia MOU, Josh Knerly representing the AAMD was urging the CPAC to insist that Cambodian museums all place an inventory of their whole collections in the hands of the curators of even the small museums of the USA before agreeing to implement the 1970 Convention for a further five years. Under this bilateral agreement, Mr Knerly will presumably be directing the same demands of all US museums, small and big, to place their inventories in the hands of the Cambodian small museums. Like Washington's 'Museum of the Bible':

There has yet to be a comprehensive catalog of the museum’s full collection published. Because of this, there are still many artifacts whose provenances have yet to be clarified. Every historic artifact should be able to have accompanying information as to when and where it was excavated and which archaeologists excavated it. The issue with having an incomplete record for each artifact is that it limits the ability for scholars to be able to determine the validity of the artifact and whether it has any worth.

What is sauce for the foreign goose should surely be sauce for the US gander. Indeed since it is the USA which is unilaterally imperiously imposing such demands on the government of a sovereign state (the 'Witschonke premise'), it behoves the US to lead by example.