Comment by moi2388
8 hours ago
Is he? One could also read it as destroying their infrastructure. Which would be devastating to the population, but a far cry from genocide.
I don’t think making unbased claims adds to the discussion; the facts are already severe enough to warrant their own critique.
He said "a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again." To me that sounds more like a threat to destroy a civilization than an announcement that the US will be targeting specific parts of Iranian infrastructure, but maybe you are better at reading between the lines than I am.
If you unplug a life support system and a person dies did you kill a person or just disable their critical infrastructure?
If you’re a doctor? You have not killed the person, you let them die in peace, if you want to continue the reductio ad absurdum?
Or if you put CO2 in the atmosphere you are contributing to toxicity and global warming?
We don’t know which infrastructure he wants to attack, and even if people do die, that is still not genocide.
Genocide is very clear intent to destroy a people.
Destroying infrastructure, or any war, is serious enough as is, we don’t need to fake arguments here.
You are the only one making fake arguments. The threat was explicitly to destroy 'a civilization', which nobody but yourself considers equivalent to 'infrastructure'. Ply your lame rhetorical fallacies elsewhere.
> We don’t know which infrastructure he wants to attack
I think you may be living under a rock. He has announced multiple times that he wants to go after oil processing, power plants, desalination plants, and bridges. His threat for today's deadline (made last week) is to destroy every power plant and bridge in the country.
> we don’t need to fake arguments here
Indeed we don't. So why make them?
> Genocide is very clear intent to destroy a people.
"a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again."
where is the intent ambiguous to you? are you just one of those that says Trump blusters big to force negotiations? otherwise, he's quite clearly said the he wants to eliminate "a whole civilization" which is exactly what genocide is. not really sure how you can be confused on this other than willingly so
Read the tweet in full. Bridges and power plants don't "die".
Genocide literally means killing a nation, and that's what Trump is threatening. If he achieves those aims by destroying vital infrastructure, it's just as much genocide as if he does it by any other means.
Article IIc of the Genocide Convention would likely cover that particular case, but I'll note that that's just your reading of it - Trump hasn't actually given specifics.
What he definitely has done, though, is make a clear statement of intent. And, historically, the most difficult part in proving genocide has been with demonstrating intent. Trump's just made that bit easy.