From the same article:

>Independent analysis of satellite imagery suggested that the school and the Sayyid al-Shuhada military complex had been struck near-simultaneously by air-delivered munitions.[39]

The objectionable part of double/triple tap strike is that you're killing rescuers or aid workers. Otherwise from a morality perspective there's no meaningful difference between 1 bomb and 2/3 bombs, especially if the actual incident was by all accounts caused by a targeting error.

Triple tap seems to indicate definitely a mistake in targeting.

Despite the war aims being nebulous, illegal, and ever changing, none of them would be advanced by bombing a girls school.

I would like the Iranian regime to be destroyed more responsibly and carefully.

Triple, according to Wikipedia.

I still think often about the article. it was published in the runup to full on invasion of Iraq by Bush Jr. While it certainly was spot on capturing the dynamic of the argument, it was also deeply prescient about the impacts of that war.

and now we find ourselves in nearly the same situation "they will welcome us as liberators", "it will just take two weeks", "the United States was in imminent danger of attack by weapons of mass destruction", "these are really bad totalitarian people and we are morally required to intervene". word for word.

and still, after doing this twice to countries directly to the east and west, and having poured money and blood into the sand to end up in a worse position than before, we're taking another run at it, with even less justification.

before bringing up the fate of the Iranian people, maybe we should look at the Iraquis - they certainly didn't benefit, or the Afghanis, or the Venezuelans to take a more recent example. It takes a special kind of idiot to ignore all that recent history and support this assault.

In the end Iranians who want freedom need to form a different regime but when a group is under attack it rallies around the flag so it is a setback not an opportunity for dissidents.

I guess if someone else is killing innocent people it makes it fine for us to kill innocent people too.

And America will as usual allow a dictator to take power, only difference will be to allow US corporations to profit from their oil.

The chance of Iran having regime replaced dropped to, like, zero.

Besides, Israel wont allow democratic or other functional regime change. Their goal is failed state with forever civil war in it. Something they can regularly bomb whenever it will seem functional. This can still happen, so everyone around should be ready for refugees waves.

Trumps idea of regime change is replacing head for someone who pays him personally - while keeping regime in place. This wont happen now.

Iranian monarchists want own dictatorship, but wont be getting it either.

Iranians who protested were just fucked and that is all about it.

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I think that if you start an unjustified war of agression against a country and you kill 150 children, you should be held responsible

> Do you think some evil military planners sat in the Pentagon, saw that school, said "let's shoot at it for shits and giggles" and pressed the button?

Absolutely. Russia does it all the time, IDF does it all the time, why would the Pentagon be any different?

Grow up conversations aren’t possible when the clowns are running the circus.

Seems in Libanon the IDF is currently targeting hospitals and first responders [0]. Sometimes people are just evil.

Regarding the USA-Iran war, the president of the USA has threatened to destroy essential infrastructure (e.g. electricity) if Iran doesn't surrender in 48 hours. Which, from my understanding, is a war crime. I think Trump is perfectly ok with bombing schools and hospitals.

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[0]: https://x.com/haaretzcom/status/2035545687006298392?s=20

> In reality someone made a mistake. It can happen. It should be investigated. It should not deter from achieving the military objectives.

There has been little planning and there are no sane military objectives beyond blow stuff up. How can there be when the objectives of the overall war change depend on what side of the bed Bone Spurs got out.

Yes, mistakes can happen.

But when you use autonomous targeting systems (with "human oversight" in theory) and tell your soldiers:

"no stupid rules of engagement,” “no politically correct wars,” and “no nation-building quagmire.” (Hegseth)

And the top commander says that he would intentionally kill the families of terrorists if voted into power:

https://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/02/politics/donald-trump-ter...

Then at some point I do not believe the term "mistake" is appropriate here.

What are the military objectives?

Destroying a school is not an "oopsie". It should literally not be possible for it to happen in any organization that values human life at all. This was a precision strike with three missiles hitting the same target, they should have been goddamn sure they knew where the millions of dollars in ordnance they were launching for the purpose of ending human life were headed. Of course, the US military places zero value on not murdering civilians, which it has shown time and time again throughout its history, so this is the obvious result: massacre by intentional negligence.

It's absolutely fucking insane to downplay it like these things just happen and are unavoidable. What is wrong with you? Maybe you don't understand these are not just numbers on a screen? How many children do you know in your life? Is it even close to 150? Can you imagine every single child you know being killed and shrugging that off, insulting people who bring it up as being "sensationalist" and "polluting the conversation"?

Yes. Evil military planners used AI to generate a list of thousands of kill sites and then engaged them without verification. They attacked a public park by accident because it has the name “police” in it. Recklessly slaughtering children is “grown up” now?

Possibly so, yes, that may have happened. The strike may have been calculated to inflame the Iranian public and lock them into a prolonged conflict, great for military contractors and their shareholders.

>> In reality someone made a mistake. It can happen. It should be investigated. It should not deter from achieving the military objectives.

You should really unpack these statements, especially if you're trying to have a "grown up conversation". You're saying that no price is too high for achieving military objectives, even those that are very unclear and unilaterally defined without justification by a easily distracted narcissist with obvious goals of distracting from his domestic problems.

Is the fact that is a mistake a comfort to the kids' parents, siblings, or friends? Are they somehow less dead?

> In reality someone made a mistake.

It's never just one mistake. It's usually a chain of mistakes and bad decisions that make the final mistake possible.

I'd estimate that there were likely 77,168,458 mistakes/bad decisions made by individuals before this mistake could happen.

I simply had a few beers before getting behind the wheel. Honestly, judge, can we admit: nobody wants to run over anyone with their car. Cmon, do you really think I was twirling my moustache, thinking about how I would love to run those people over? Of course not! No, I am a benevolent fun loving guy. And I was simply having a few beers! How else is a good guy like me supposed to get home?

Then somebody should be punished so severely that incidence would go down dramatically. I dont mean 2 weeks administrative leave (or medal and promotion), I mean lives ruined, names tarnished, and/or people executed/jailed for 20 lives for mass (in)voluntary manslaughter.

In reality, in same vein quite a few US laws are set. If you are not US passport holder you are subhuman. Less rights, less care, more disposable, just a garbage to step on. We saw it enough in past 80 years to see a clear pattern everywhere US went and (mostly) failed.

For those slow in back rows - this is how you get almost endless stream of new fanatical recruits to merry groups like isis or al-queda. Dumb, supremely dumb. Yeah, 'a mistake, it can happen'. Fuck that american self-entitled rotten racist mentality. Then you wonder why whole world hates you now and what you stand for and represent. What a success story for america in past year.

Sometimes a mistake is negligence. If you're going to use lethal force it's a good idea to check your facts first. It's been a school for years, how was that missed?

None of that happened because the US was unprepared for this war. It was Bibi's idea and Trump is weak and incompetent so he just went along with it, ironically because he thought it would avoid making him look weak and incompetent.

Have you heard Hegseth speeches lately? Or Trumps?

Like, yes, evil military planners did sat down and said "rules of engagement are woke, the working groups handling civilian safety are waste of money, be maximum lethal".

Also, they had no stable military objectives except "make my insecure masculinity feel manly".

I think the military planners sat in the Pentagon and thought "Hey if we hit this school and kill all these children, that will achieve us X. Shall we do it?" And then they decided to do it. Yes, that's what I think.

Good try. When you are complicit in genocide in Gaza, destroy multiple countries on pretext of democracy and human rights, start wars with blatant lies, the "let's shoot at it for shits and giggles" is actually being kind.

Would you be so calm if someone made a mistake with your kid’s school?

I have heard more than one Trump-defender say “well they would have grown up to attack us.”

> Do you think some evil military planners sat in the Pentagon...

Why shouldn’t he believe it?

You people believe the same kind of crap when you're told that X (insert the current boogeyman de jour) hates Murica and wants to kill you all.

The US is not in a position to process much of the sweet crude it has. Instead, imports sour crude, which is what much of the US's refineries are actually built to handle. This is why Venezuela was such a thorn in the side of the US, as they were one of the major producers and also largely produced sour crude.

As adwn says, it's a globally priced commodity, and the US is not in a position to disentangle itself from that market because in spite of being one of the world's largest producers, US refineries are not in a position to process that product, so it needs to go abroad. The US needs to import significant amounts of sour crude to be refined for their own use.

The US is just as screwed as the rest of us.

Also, the primary worry for Europe isn't oil, it's natural gas.

Oil is a globally priced commodity. This means that downstream consumers of oil in the US will be just as affected by rising prices as European consumers. US producers of oil will benefit, though.

That's rich, the guy threatening the existence of NATO more than any other factor is trying to bolster NATO. I struggle to imagine how you square this in your mind.

"Trump the 45th even implored EU to do so and bolster NATO."

All he wanted was EU to buy more US weapons (also to help with his wars). Guess what is happening now, we still do buy US weapons where there is no other choice, but apart from that, we build and buy our own things now. Try to get rid of US software depenencies - in general, get rid of any dependency we have towards you. If this was Trump's goal, great job I have to say.

> Since WWII you're living under the umbrella of the US, as client states. There was no reason Europe could not amass a significant military power that would grant its sovereignty, but money went to increasing quality of life instead. Trump the 45th even implored EU to do so and bolster NATO.

Problem is that Trump wants to eat the cake and have it too. If we’re no longer being protected by the US then US companies should not expect preferential laws and access to the EU market.

> Since WWII […]

Europe didn't slack off militarily during the Cold War. Germany, for example, poured massive amounts of money and resources into the Bundeswehr to be able to fend of the Soviets. The US relied as much on the European members of NATO as the Europeans did on the US.

After the Cold War, both the US and Europe scaled back their military spending and enjoyed the peace dividend. It was only after 2001 that the US increased its budget again – but to fight insurrectionist wars (which EU members aren't particularly interested in), not in a peer conflict. They're not prepared for a pro-longed war against a near-peer power.

So although I agree that Europe should be rearming heavily, and should have started in 2022 at the very latest, it's not like the US did really much better. They're really good at curb-stomping much weaker opponents, like Venezuela or Iran, but they haven't seriously prepared for a war against China.

Statements with "the only bright side" usually do not indicate celebrating.