Comparisons between the Pentagon’s war plans for the looming war in Iraq and the Nazis’ bombing of the Basque village of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War in 1937 are rife. For a sampling, see this Google Search: ‘Guernica & Iraq’. As Gar Smith commented in Alternet:

U.S. military strategists have announced a plan to pummel Iraq with as many as 800 cruise missiles in the space of two days. Many of these missiles would rain down on Baghdad, a city of five million people. If George W. Bush gets the war he wants, Baghdad could become the 21st century’s Guernica.

On April 26, 1937, 25 Nazi bombers dropped 100,000 pounds of bombs and incendiaries on the peaceful Basque village. Seventy percent of the town was destroyed and 1,500 people, a third of the population, were killed.

The Pentagon now predicts that the Iraq blitzkrieg could approximate the devastation of a nuclear explosion. “The sheer size of this has never been … contemplated before,” one Pentagon strategist boasted to CBS News. “There will not be a safe place in Baghdad.”

The Pentagon dubbed its cold-blooded attack plan “Shock and Awe,” a bizarre conjunction of trauma and admiration.

A full-size reproduction of Picasso’s “Guernica”, which he donated to the U.N., hangs in its lobby and is the backdrop against which diplomats make their press statements. Now comes word that a large blue curtain has been used to cover the work. A U.N. spokesperson, asked why, would only say that the curtain is an “appropriate background for the cameras.” But it appears to be rather a matter of sensitivity to US mouthpieces such as Colin Powell or John Negroponte who would have to advocate for “Shock and Awe” in front of an overpowering depiction of women, children and animals shouting in horror as they are attacked from the skies. Art Daily [thanks, Adam]

In related art news, fittingly from the same day’s Art Daily as the above, Rubens’ early masterpiece “The Massacre of the Innocents” (1609-1610) will be on display at the National Gallery in London for three years on loan from the new owner who recently acquired it at a record-breaking auction, it has just been announced. Only recently affirmed to be a Rubens, the piece was so detested by its former owner that it was lent to a monastery until sold last fall.

Those crafty curators are always making statements with their art choices, aren’t they?

Finally, here’s a concise guide to The Art of War and Peace.