Integrity in the CPAC

Integrity:

In the US, Professor Rosemary Joyce has resigned from the President's Cultural Property Advisory Committee citing presidential statements targeting Iran's cultural sites. When the US Abandons Protection of Cultural Sites We Must Act  January 6, 2020

When the US threatens to abandon the international consensus on protection of cultural sites, as an archaeologist and a citizen I must act, even if action is limited to raising a voice in protest.
Today I tendered my resignation from the Cultural Property Advisory Committee, which advises the US State Department on requests from other countries to help protect their heritage from illicit trafficking. When I was offered appointment, I had to balance the promise of contributing to combatting looting with my own critique of treating “heritage” as national and cosmopolitan, rather than local, familial, and relevant first to descendant communities.
I also had to assess this potential service in light of my public activism against US foreign policy, with its easy militarization of foreign relations, tolerance or encouragement of authoritarian governments, and use of extra-judicial killing by drone strikes.
[...] In the past three years, despite well publicized attrition in the diplomatic corps and the impact of an administration that called for massive cuts in State Department resources, our committee has continued to expand US commitments to heritage preservation. Particularly notable have been actions in relation to countries affected by conflict in North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean— areas where US foreign policy has contributed to unsettled conditions. These have fueled trafficking and sometimes encouraged self-serving arguments by collectors that movement of antiquities into collections outside the impacted countries might actually be doing good.
Until this weekend, I could say that, despite these histories and tensions, the US government maintained commitments to international conventions and global expectations to prevent harm to cultural sites.
With a tweet suggesting targeting of Iranian cultural sites, and a statement to media explicitly disclaiming these legal obligations, the situation changed. The refusal of the Secretary of State to explicitly reject these statements compounded these destructive messages. That silence undercuts the process I was part of, creating a challenge to maintain US legitimacy as a force opposing destruction of cultural heritage.
This made it impossible for me to continue as a participant in this process. [...] What [this] does is what any citizen can do— makes clear a refusal to accept unethical, indeed, immoral actions by the US government.
I will hope for a better future and a government recommitted to values I can endorse. I will work for that future and know everyone I have worked with in this role, now ended, will do so as well.

So, it seems the Secretary of State intends to remain silent. Now it is time for the US lobbyists and collectors (most of them Republicans, I believe) to equally honestly address those 'Good Collector' arguments of theirs in the present context.