I'm putting this[0] here just as a reminder of how horrible things can be and for basically nothing.
Notice they had 0 issues precisely striking the building housing Iranian leadership when this whole thing started. They didn’t “accidentally” hit the grocery store two blocks away.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/11/benjamin-netany...
“Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”
Maybe an extremist Israeli put together that particular target list?
For planning Operation Epic Fury, the US military utilized the Maven Smart System, an artificial intelligence software designed to streamline the targeting process and greatly reduce the amount of personnel involved in it. Capable of producing 1,000 target packages in one hour, with the use of the system the US military said it had struck 6,000 targets in Iran during the first two weeks of the war.
...it goes on to say...
The [NYT] inquiry suggested that the school was likely targeted due to outdated coordinates provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency
Advanced rockets bolted onto mainframes guided by data from Palantir.
Couldn't it be to terrorise the other side while still being able to claim that it was a mistake? Remember that the school was hit by three distinct strikes.
With this particular incident with apparent US strikes on a school adjacent to a military complex, and formerly part of that military complex, you would think it must be obvious to any reasonable person that we did not knowingly target a school.
Yet here we are.
We are so far past there being any merit to “Israel would never knowingly target civilians/children/hospitals/etc” that you just shouldn’t even bother. Just own it, if your leadership thinks the only winning strategy is the annihilation of another people, or at least their complete displacement, own it. Stop trying to hide behind “it was a mistake” while simultaneously showing you have no issues putting a missile through a singular car window to assassinate people labeled an enemy. Nobody buys it anymore.
They should have known, so it may still be a war crime. https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/the-weekly-cons...
And if it was an accident it only gives us more reason to oppose the whole operation. Why should we believe what they think they "know" about uranium stocks or anything else, if they couldn't figure out a building has been a school for 10+ years?
I also wonder if they really should have known by the second or third strike, but I can't readily find whether they had a live visual or anything, so probably did not. Arguably you can't in good conscience strike a target you can't see well, but I'm sure it happens all the time and doesn't usually go this bad.
I think either an intelligence failure, or a mistake or a miss is more likely. Maybe missiles don't always hit where they were meant to go. Especially if there is anti missile defences (which Iran is likely to have). Maybe Iran anti-air hit the school, or sent a US missile off course?
They would have had live video feed from drones, and images sent from the first tomahawk missile for target confirmation. Yhey knew exactly what they were targeting and hitting.
> They would have had live video feed from drones, and images sent from the first tomahawk missile for target confirmation. Yhey knew exactly what they were targeting and hitting.
You sure? IIRC it was one of about 6000 strikes. Was it all a cover to bomb one school?
Forget "rules based order" or any sympathy from US Military/Pentagon/DoD.
When "arabs" bomb "the West" - it's "terrorism". When "the West" bomb "arabs" - it's a "mistake".
Same forces that did laser precision strikes against Maduro or countless military heads of Iran are attacking civilian infrastructure with double tap precision.
I am amazed how since WW2 there wasn't a military coup in USA as many wars from them were against any logic. I guess it just proves year after year, generation after generation that US military from top-to-bottom thinks that they are the only "good guys" and have been brainwashed just as their counterparts (be it Iraqis, Iranians, Chinese or anyone).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacks_on_schools_during_the_...
https://www.ms.now/news/iran-youths-protect-power-plants-sau...
Sounds like a blatant violation of all the conventions and a war crime.
> The prohibition of using human shields in the Geneva Conventions, Additional Protocol I and the Statute of the International Criminal Court are couched in terms of using the presence (or movements) of civilians or other protected persons to render certain points or areas (or military forces) immune from military operations.[18] Most examples given in military manuals, or which have been the object of condemnations, have been cases where persons were actually taken to military objectives in order to shield those objectives from attacks. The military manuals of New Zealand and the United Kingdom give as examples the placing of persons in or next to ammunition trains.
The situation in Iran is not this. The suggestion was that humans might volunteer to go to non-military sites.
As an extreme hypothetical, are humans living in their homes acting as human shields for those homes? How about people at school? How about people parading on a bridge? Does it become different if someone threatens to blow up a bridge and people parade there in response?
> As an extreme hypothetical, are humans living in their homes acting as human shields for those homes? How about people at school? How about people parading on a bridge?
Generally speaking I read this as not, because they aren't being "used to" render those points immune from attack, they just happen to be doing so. Hypothetically if you were to rush civilians back to their homes in an evacuated town to protect it from an attack - or as you suggest organize parades on bridges that are threatened - that would seem to meet the "used to" requirement.
(Good discussion though)
[1] https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciv-1949/art...
> Article 28 - Prohibition of using human shields
> The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations.
I think this was done voluntarily as a demonstration of sacrifice and nationalism.
“ Soldiers when in desperate straits lose the sense of fear. If there is no place of refuge, they will stand firm. If they are in the heart of a hostile country, they will show a stubborn front. If there is no help for it, they will fight hard."
Sun Tzu
Anyway, as i said in the other comment, it is actually not that important how all those people got there. The key thing here is that it was a deliberate government act of human shield creation.
This attack on the school comes up all the time as a talking point. And I will tell you exactly how most Iranians react: they find it weird that you’ll talk about this school, but you won’t talk about the thousands of protesters killed by the regime.
Yes. People die in war. It’s sad. But most Iranians will say “whether we go to war or not Iranians are being killed” and it’s better to fight for regime change than to just accept the status quo.
Imagine being against the American Revolution because some innocent civilians will get killed? Yes, people die in war, but if there’s a chance for something better than it’s definitely worth it!
Every Iranian I know thinks it’s worth it and they danced in the street when Khamenei was killed.
What was so great about the American revolution anyway? It's not like it gave any average people the right to vote, and it arguably preserved slavery for an extra 30 years.
The US government is not in any way responsible for the murder of protesters in Iran. That is done entirely by the government in Iran.
The USA and Israel ARE responsible for the murder of the kids (and adults) in that school. If you are American or Israeli you can care about the murdered protesters, but it it not really your responsibility. The murdered kids are however.
People bring up the school as a way of discouraging American military bombing Iran. It’s a way of shaming Americans, as if we are bad, making us feel guilty for bombing. Right?
What I’m trying to say is that Iranians I’ve spoken to are happy that we are bombing the regime. From their perspective, they are already being killed. The regime is dangerous to them. Bombing the regime and possibly destroying the regime is worth the risk.
So don’t be so hard on yourself. Iranians want your help. People die in wars, there is always collateral damage, but sometimes war is just. Sometimes the ends do justify the means. That’s how the Iranians I’ve spoken to feel.
In a few weeks when Trump needs a new country to attack to keep "flooding the zone", he will leave Iran, maybe the same regime still there, with some extra hundreds or thousands of innocents killed. I truly hope it goes better than that, but why should I believe that anything good will accidentally be accomplished by the demonstrably selfish, dumb, lazy, lying people at the helm of the US? They barely pay lip service to helping Iranians, let alone appear competent enough to do it.
What exactly is this "ends" you are describing?
Here's hoping the regime is destabilised enough to topple by itself.
When the French helped us during the Revolutionary War, they didn't shore bombard the colonists' kids because it would have been bad and counterproductive.
But the justification, if the liberation actually transpires, is sound. An order of magnitude more French and Dutch died at the hands of Allied bombing and shelling in 1944. I think most agree the the upside of being liberated from Germany makes the Allied landings a net positive, though.
But to reiterate, I really doubt the revolutionary guard is going to lose control of Iran.
You are very naive if you think the IRGC truly killed 10's of thousands of it's own people. Israel openly talks about Mossad organizing and supporting the coup, and good old Donny has admitted they have given weapons to organized resistance.
I estimate that many of the death numbers come from armed resistance being killed by the IRGC, not ordinary peaceful protestors. I also think armed resistance killed many Irani citizens. There is obviously fog of war here. The thousands of deaths were likely inflated and obfuscated.
Look at the coups we have backed in the middle east (including formerly in Iran which is what originally led to the Islamic revolution) -- and you will see a pattern. Both US and Israel provide material support to groups like ISIS or actors like Bin Laden. An Al-Qaeda fighter is literally the head of Syria now thanks to Israel.
I don't love Hamas, IRGC or Hezbollah, I don't like their ideology. But it is myopic to think they exist in a vaccum.
If you can’t alter your reasoning to include outcomes then you will make poorer decisions.
The French and Dutch were members of the Allies, with Charles de Gaulle as leader of the Free-French forces and Queen Wilhelmina the head of the Dutch government-in-exile, both in London. Both wanted the allies to get the Germans out of their countries.
There is no government-in-exile calling for the bombing of Iran as a method for liberation.
Just as Laos did not call for the US to drop some 2 million tons on that country - more than were dropped on Japan, Germany and Britain during World War II - resulting in the deaths of over 200,000 people, as part of the US's ineffective attempt to "liberate" North Vietnam.
If killing those kids was instrumental in a greater good, only then is it worth being philosophical about. From what I've seen, they were too eager with the bang bang boom boom to actually double check that it was a valid target.
They fed ancient intelligence into an AI which spit out a target list that nobody seems to have checked, period.
It's even less likely to work because Trump has already claimed, publicly, to arming the protestors. That already makes any regime change illegitimate. They're all foreign backed agitators.
I bring it up because this shit is messy.
Because the ones abroad don't have a lot to lose and much to gain. The ones in Iran have a lot to lose as well.
what case does it make that the constitution needs to be abandoned?
At most there were a couple thousand casualties from violent riots that involved armed gangs (or sleeper cells if you want to go that route).
There were not "60,000" peaceful protestors executed by the government, as Trump claimed yesterday without evidence. That is murderous propaganda, blood libel intended to deflect from the actual mass murder of civilians by American forces e.g. the Minab school.
It was a narrative specifically designed to induce comments like yours.
It's looking like this is the exact type of magical thinking of the most useless "president" ever. Meanwhile in the real world, such things take hard work.
* The people responsible for murdering ten thousand protesters are now dead.
* The IRGC's military capability is significantly degraded.
* Their nuclear program is likely set back even further. It's hard to get real information here but we should assume that supporting facilities were high on the target list.
That's not nothing. From a strict utilitarian perspective, it's probably "worth it". Which sucks, but I haven't heard a better plan.
some of the iranian side for events that resulted in a bunch of death have been killed... while also killing a bunch mkre iranians, but have the americans/israelis that armed the protestors into terrorists and incided them to violence been killed?
i think theres enough police, mossad, and cia folks left to do that again and again until the protestors are all gone.
similarly, its blatantly obvious for everyone that the US destoryed the iranian capabilities that dont matter. iran is still capable enough to seter both putting american ships in the strait, and boots on the ground, so that degradation is not significant. optimization without profiling.
from a strict utilitarian perspective, definitely not worth it. the costs were extraordinarily expensive and havent been fully paid yet, and the profits for the US is a worse position than they started it
theres some light benefits to the gulf and ukraine in that the gulf realizes that they can spend much less on defense by buying from ukraine, but that pales in comparison to the costs paid in destroyed oil infrastructure and interceptors that could have gone to ukraine