
The Pentagon Says It Will Not Bomb Iranian Art Sites - ughitsaaron
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/pentagon-trump-iran-cultural-sites-1747071
======
aerodog
they'll just bomb sites with innocent human beings instead. phew, i was
worried for a second they'd commit war crimes!

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pavlov
Just two weeks before the first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, the target
for the second bomb wasn't going to be Nagasaki's industrial zone but instead
Kyoto, a city of immense cultural value.

Henry Stimson, the U.S. Secretary of War, had visited Kyoto several times
including his honeymoon. He lobbied directly with the President to save Kyoto.

 _" The military didn't want it removed so it kept putting Kyoto back on the
list until late July but Stimson went directly to President Truman."_

[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33755182](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-
asia-33755182)

Iran has many sites as important as Kyoto. I'm 99.9% sure there's nobody in
the Trump administration who went to Iran for their honeymoon, however...

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intsunny
Off-topic for HN, but disgusting that any "leader" would ever recommend such.

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rhombocombus
That this is even a thing that needs to be said is a ghastly reflection of
where we are as a species and a country.

~~~
mam2
this is not the worst humanity has done though

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henvic
How the Pentagon plan to control what crimes their thugs commit overseas, so
far away from home?

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ddgflorida
No one would expect them to. The US is not the Taliban.

~~~
krapp
I would.

I remember reading a Quora question about why New Yorkers hate Donald
Trump[0], and one of the comments resonated with me when it described him as a
thuggish hustler who doesn't know he's a thuggish hustler, the kind of guy who
would "drop a ceiling in the Sistene Chapel."

You can't make any claims about the integrity of the American military when
it's being run by someone without integrity. If the Library of Alexandria
existed today, Trump as Commander in Chief would probably have it burned to
the ground just to spite academia.

[0][https://www.quora.com/Why-do-residents-of-New-York-City-
vehe...](https://www.quora.com/Why-do-residents-of-New-York-City-vehemently-
dislike-Donald-Trump)

------
earlINmeyerkeg
Can someone explain to me how bombing Iran benefits the US financially? I mean
this is on HN so does that mean they have some Shia AI that we can benefit
from?

~~~
henvic
Statism in all of its vestments (like militarism) is not about benefiting
citizens (of the USA or anywhere else) but about benefiting groups of
interests of powerful people that gravitate around the state apparatus.
Democracy isn't liberty, and these so-called wars aren't wars but massacres
sponsored by the state benefiting only a few companies sometimes referred to
as "the military complex" in spite of the rest of society.

[https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/83](https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/83)
War as Spoliation [https://mises.org/library/war-
spoliation](https://mises.org/library/war-spoliation)

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LyndsySimon
Intuitively, I think there are several audiences at play here, each of which
is reading something different into Trump's threat. For context, here is what
he said:

> Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as revenge
> for our ridding the world of their terrorist leader who had just killed an
> American, & badly wounded many others, not to mention all of the people he
> had killed over his lifetime, including recently....

> ....hundreds of Iranian protesters. He was already attacking our Embassy,
> and preparing for additional hits in other locations. Iran has been nothing
> but problems for many years. Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran
> strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have.....

> ....targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken
> by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the
> Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST
> AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!

The first audience for this is obviously Trump himself. If I ask myself what
he's trying to accomplish here, and I believe that he's trying to intimidate
Iran into backing off, at least for the moment. He's telegraphing that there
is a strike plan already prepared and that it's something that Iran _really_
doesn't want to happen. In my opinion, Trump is very nuanced - almost
machiavellian, in fact - in his overall strategies but is very straightforward
in his communication. If he'd wanted Iran to believe that he would order the
destruction of cultural sites, he was have said it plainly. The mention of
"culture" is the last in a series of descriptors, not the central point.

Also consider that Iran is a theocracy. As a result, presumably any attack on
the Iranian government would target religious sites implicitly: there is no
clear dividing line between "the government of Iran" and "Islam in Iran".
Given that the government of Iran is the second audience, it seems that what
he's saying is that his threat applies to government leadership instead of
solely military targets.

Trump's domestic opponents are another audience, and have different biases.
They seem to expect Trump to act aggressively and in a way ignorant of both
the status quo and international law. I get why they are interpreting
"important to [...] the Iranian culture" as "Iranian cultural sites", but that
strikes me as a particularly uncharitable reading. This creep in what was
actually said versus what has been interpreted as having been meant continues;
the article linked is from an art-centric site. It uses "heritage sites" in
the headline, and "heritage sites" aren't mentioned at all in Trump's tweets.
Further, the article quotes art directors, and then explicitly calls out
Persepolis as have been "in all likelihood" "spared thanks to the backlash
against Trump's threat." _Persepolis_. In fact, none of the heritage sites
listed seem like they would have ever been on a strike list in the first
place.

I acknowledge that I don't share the biases of the article's author, but it
doesn't seem at all reasonable to assume that ancient ruins are what were
referenced in Trump's tweets. On the other hand, if my reading of Trump's
intentions are accurate it would be unwise for Iranian leadership to be
holding their press conferences in the Masjed-e Jāme’ in Isfahan or using the
Shushtar hydraulic system as a convenient place to store centrifuges. It's
unlawful (and immoral) to target a heritage site because it's a heritage site,
but if the enemy attempts to use the site as a shield that's another story
entirely.

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weberc2
What are the Tweets in question. artnet.com keeps paraphrasing and quoting
other tweets, but I can't find the actual Tweets that threaten to bomb
art/cultural sites. Can someone please link me to them?

EDIT: Why am I downvoted? This question isn't rhetorical. Did I miss something
obvious in TFA?

~~~
LyndsySimon
Here you go:
[https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12135939757325271...](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1213593975732527112)

