This past weekend, President Trump repeatedly threatened to target Iranian cultural sites should Iran respond to his administration's assassination of Qassem Soleimani. (And on Tuesday, Iran did just that, even as the president walked back his threats.) As noted by my colleague Matt Ford, the intentional destruction of such cultural sites would be a war crime deserving of impeachment and prosecution in the Hague, not that Trump much cares. The threat was deemed “grotesque” by Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins, who wrote that attacking sites like Persepolis would place America on “the same ethical plane as the Islamic State.”
Both Ford and Jenkins are correct about the obscenity of the threats, but as any Native citizen can likely attest, the if proposition here—the idea that the United States might cross a line that it hasn't just yet—is grounded in an alternate reality. America has already engaged in this type of destruction. Was built on it, in fact.
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