How can anyone take this argument seriously when the DoW was simultaneously committing dozens of extrajudicial executions of small boat users in the Gulf?
There were 900 strikes in 12h, and only one target involved a strike on a school, and huge coincidence that target was a dozen meters from a military compound and was in fact part of that military compound not long ago.
It's quite easy to accept that this was a horrific mistake. Whether you agree with the idea of striking Iran at all is up to you, but once they "went hot", precision strikes on military targets were successful in 900 cases, and it's plausible that one precision strike was issued incorrectly.
It doesn't bring back the kiddos. It also doesn't mean it's a war crime. It's right to be angry about that strike or even the larger war if you oppose it, but spurious legal justifications for outrage aren't required - it can be wrong even when legally justified or plausibly just a mistake.
But nothing anywhere in any of these increasingly pathological threads do I see evidence of a war crime. Tragedy yes, intentional crime, no. Preventable yes, cold blooded intentional child murder no.
It was clearly a tragedy. Very few Americans--certainly I've never met one--support that strike in retrospect. Instead they are angry that such a terrible mistake was possible and they generally want a thorough investigation and targeting procedure reforms to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Americans hold their military to a high moral standard. But wars don't have to be fought so cleanly. Certainly the Golden Horde had no compunction about genocide. If acknowledging our shared humanity with innocent victims and expressing remorse for their deaths is ridiculed, then we're primed for a descent into nihilism, wanton cruelty, and mass slaughter.
EDIT: @Hikikomori, I cannot reply to your post, but I am happy to engage if you follow HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument
> Please don't post shallow dismissals