Naturally, some consider America totally to blame for the terrible devastation of Iraqi museums.

The recent looting of the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad has been described as a devastating loss, one of the biggest cultural disasters of all time. The many treasures in the national museum were considered unique artifacts of a universal and shared history in a region often termed the cradle of civilization.

Since it is so fashionable and so easy for people to blame the United States for virtually everything anymore, there predictably are those who contend America is totally at fault in this case. Critics contend America was warned about the prospects for this cultural disaster and should have taken steps to ensure it did not happen.

That would have been an outstanding achievement if Baghdad had been an open city and a pushover for coalition forces moving in as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The trouble is that there were other priorities for our troops and their leaders that just might have prevented them from dashing in and cordoning off the museum and other cultural gems to prevent loss or damage.

Has any military commander in history gathered his troops before an assault or invasion and said something like: “OK, our goal is to take this place and there are unfriendlies waiting to prevent that. Whatever the cost, however, we have to get to the local museum and protect it from friend and foe, the enemy and looters. And after that, we can go about the business of securing the territory and focusing on our own safety.”

How ridiculous would that be?

It would have been tremendous if our forces could have moved in quickly to take over the museum area and protect it, but while our troops were doing all they could to attend to higher priorities, the door was opened for looters. They did a thorough job leading to horrible losses.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been criticized for saying that the looting in Baghdad, at many levels, was part of the “price of liberation.” It is, of course. Rumsfeld added this is “what happens when you go from a dictatorship with repressed order, a police state, to something that is going to be different. There’s a transition period and no one is in control.”

Suppose museum protection had been a No. 1 goal and Americans had killed or injured would-be looters, losing people on “the way in.” What a wondrous headline that might create for those who think we have not done anything right, no matter what our losses might have been.

Again, it would have been ideal to save the museum and its pieces. The Iraqi nation and the world have been deprived of great portions of collective memory. That will complicate the rebuilding process.

But for people to contend that the Iraqi museum should have been one of the U.S. military’s top priorities as dangerous as Baghdad has been of late is to display a total lack of understanding of the dangers of war.

But, of course, the United States must be to blame. Never mind that desperate Iraqis and their kind did the looting. It is good to understand that so many people consider us so omnipotent, but we have to recognize that sets us up for unrealistic rancor such as we are seeing in this case.