'For their own protection': Vice reporter jokes that looted 'artifacts' from US Capitol might turn up in Iraqi museum

Vice News correspondent Hind Hassan lit up Twitter with a bold, if sarcastic, suggestion, that looted artifacts seized when Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol should turn up in an Iraqi museum.

Following the invasion of the US Capitol building on Wednesday by the president’s supporters, who were protesting against the confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, a photo of one of the men involved carrying off House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s lectern went viral online.

Hassan poked fun at the incident – and American imperialism – by tweeting, “Hoping these looted American artifacts turn up on display in Baghdad's National Museum of Iraq and are kept there indefinitely for protection as well as for the cultural viewing pleasure of locals.”

Others soon joined in, suggesting that the artifacts could also turn up in the British Museum – which has been accused of being the “world’s largest receivers of stolen property” – or elsewhere “for their own protection” because “they could never be displayed safely in their home country.”

“Americans just ran out of countries to invade so they had to invade their own finally,” one user quipped, while another wrote that Americans “were so busy exporting democracy to everyone else” they “forgot to save some” for themselves. 

Thousands of Iraqi artifacts were looted following the United States’ invasion in 2003 – many of which have never been returned.

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