A note on Trump’s doubling down on his threat to bomb cultural sites.
These are photos I took of the remains of the al-Nuri Grand Mosque last month on a trip to Iraq with @Refugees . Built in 12th century, the mosque was a symbol of Mosul. It was destroyed by ISIS in 2017.
These are photos I took of the remains of the al-Nuri Grand Mosque last month on a trip to Iraq with @Refugees . Built in 12th century, the mosque was a symbol of Mosul. It was destroyed by ISIS in 2017.
The people we met in Mosul had been through ungodly things. One father, who had returned to the city thanks to the @UNDP restoring his house, described being in the old city during the last months of the battle to retake Mosul from ISIS control:
“We were trapped. We ate cats, rats. For water you had to risk your life to go to the river where the soldiers would shoot at you. We collected rainwater to drink. There were days my children were so hungry, and there was shelling and shooting, and I just wanted to rescue them.”
Nevertheless, last month he was hopeful for the future. “It’s like Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We don’t think anything worse could happen...People have nightmares. They grieve their losses. My house was destroyed, but because of Allah and UNDP, I have returned.”
In the wake of that kind of calamity, in the midst of ongoing difficulties, with a shattered city, displaced people unable to return home, and predatory militias, you might not think that a cultural site would be a priority for people there. But of course it was.
On the mosque you could make out anti-ISIS graffiti, which at first amused me. I asked a Moslawi man who wrote it. He was not amused. “CTS” he said, referring to Iraqi special forces. “It would not have been a Moslawi. Because we would respect what has been left behind.”
Even the ruins that remained were sacred to him. And it struck me that the destruction of such a place, where generations upon generations had found meaning and community and identity, was indicative of the special loathsomeness of ISIS.
Now our president is doubling down on his threat of attacking cultural sites in Iran. That would be an assault not on the Iranian regime, but on its people, and upon world culture.
nytimes.com/2020/01/05/us/…
nytimes.com/2020/01/05/us/…
If he’s serious, it’d be a descent into that special brand of loathsomeness I identified with my enemies when I was an American Marine in Iraq.
