Didn't see your comment last fall...
In your waxing philospophical over your tea and bisquit, you've covered all the bases without taking a stand on anything in particular.
I believe you're implying by "We didn't have to excavate and package it all up in tourism projects scattered all about these lands today," that somehow "the West" controls these sites currently. Are you suggesting that Syria should have seen this coming in 1946 and covered and "unadvertised" their antiquities, so as not to attract attention?
AlexHunger's comment on the Temple of Baal Shameen references such a wistful wish, but he didn't write about it in the same jaded "told you so" manner you use.
The only specific thing you seem to say is to call to not buy looted antiquities, and then you frame it as a question. Are you not sure about that?
You wrote: "Has not archaeology been long implicated in the process of colonialism?"
Think about Khaled al-Asaad. Then see if you feel certain enough to make that a statement and not a question.
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road