How unfortunate that the Iraqi people, freed from decades of tyrannical rule, would destroy their history by smashing ancient artifacts and stealing others from their national museum, the world’s best repository of items from the earliest civilizations. While it is likely too late to repair the damaged items, the United States must devote considerable resources to ensuring the safe return of cuneiform tablets, gold jewelry and statues that date back thousands of years.

Looters have taken more than 170,000 antiquities from the museum, including a 3300 B.C. mask of the Sumerian goodess Inanna, believed to be one of the earliest pieces of professional sculpture ever produced. Another missing item is a 4,300-year-old bronze mask of an Akkadian king that is featured in most ancient art history books.

While U.S. forces guarded the Iraqi Oil Ministry, they left the National Museum open to the looting mobs.

A museum in the northern city of Mosul was also looted and the National Library in Baghdad, which held one of the oldest copies of the Quran, was torched Tuesday.

The United States has done little to stop the destruction, but now it must step in to ensure that the stolen items are not traded on the black market. Secretary of State Colin Powell issued a statement Monday warning those who handle the stolen items that they are committing a crime. He also said the United States is working with INTERPOL to pursue international law enforcement efforts to locate these items and to return them to Iraq before they make it into international crime channels.

Secretary Powell also said, belatedly, that U.S. troops would protect museums and antiquities in Iraq and that U.S. radio broadcasts in Iraq are encouraging the safe return of looted items. These are helpful measures, but like so much else, money is what is needed to solve this problem. Iraqis stole them, most likely, not because they wanted a piece of their country’s history but because they believed they could make a lot of money by selling them. Instead of finding the highest bidder on eBay or in some underground art auction house, the highest bid must necessarily come from those who understand the true value of these treasures.

Italy has already committed to contributing $400,000 to buy back items looted from the Iraq National Museum. “Responsible governments should put up money” to retrieve Iraqi antiquities, said McGuire Gibson, a professor of Mesopotamian archeology at the University of Chicago. He was packing earlier this week to head to today’s emergency meeting of the United Nation’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in Paris. Other U.S. officials who join him should bring their checkbooks.