Trump’s Willingness to Destroy Culture
In the midst of our recent, deadly skirmishes with Iran, President Trump at one point threatened to bomb 52 sites that were “important to Iran and the Iranian culture.” Commentators quickly pointed out that doing so would violate the UNESCO World Heritage Convention as well as the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. (For just a sampling of those responses, see here, here, here, here, and here.) For my own part, I was struck by the President’s understanding of “culture” and his willingness to destroy it.