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The problem with "shit happens in war" is that, while true, it still rests on an underlying belief that the war is justified. "We accidentally bombed a school while fighting against tyranny" is easier to swallow (assuming it's credible) than "we accidentally bombed a school while carrying out a raid because we didn't like their drug importation laws."
As the USG made approximately zero effort to sell the effort to the US public and has had incoherent messaging, that belief appears not to be particularly widespread. As civilian (and, for that matter, military) casualties continue to mount, it raises the question of what aim is justifying them. By the Trump admin's own words, we're not spreading democracy and we're not responding to an attack or imminent threat. Best I can tell, this has either been an exercise in kinetic gunboat diplomacy or the US getting suckered into doing the heavy lifting for an Israeli attempt at regime destabilization.
I'll note again that people were fairly willing to swallow the collateral damage of coalition air and artillery strikes around Raqqa and Mosul because it was generally accepted that the alternative of leaving ISIS in control of these cities was even worse. They were less willing to excuse civilian casualties resulting from bad targeting/intel (or callousness) when it came to the broader efforts of Inherent Resolve, where it simply seemed to be adding to the carnage of the Syrian Civil War rather than achieving anything desirable.
I mean didn't Iran just literally kill within an order of magnitude as many civilians in a week as Israel killed Gazans in the whole recent affair? Intentionally and not as collateral damage? Like I don't know, it's not hard for me to find the good guys in this conflict.
Do you still intend to justify this with speculative number of killed protestors when your country is burning Tehran wholesale?
If the facts change my analysis changes.
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I'm not sure I see the relevance. Iran massacring tens of thousands of protestors would a strong point in favor regime change but that isn't what is happening. "We're the good guys because they're the bad guys" logic doesn't check out because not starting a war was an option. It is possible that both parties in a conflict are bad actors, and is possible that well-intentioned actors are exercising criminally poor judgment. The fact that collateral damage happens in war is why you need to think carefully and exercise judgment before going to war. Even if your adversaries are the most despicable people in history, you still have to ask yourself if starting a war will make things better.
In point of fact, we have very little reason to extend the benefit of the doubt to the current US administration. They've failed to articulate a clear purpose for war (basically everyone has offered a different rationale), but they have been openly disdainful of humanitarian concerns and dismissed democratization as a priority.
What I mean to illustrate by pointing out the tens of thousands dead at the hand of the regime very recently is that accidentally hitting a school needs to be put into context with the status quo. "Shit happens in war" is a little easier to swallow when even worse shit is happening without the war. If we're trying to determine how the ledger balances out, I just can't see how some mild collateral damage could possibly factor into the calculus. Certainly it's worth considering if we actually can topple the regime and how that'd play out, but we really could be bombing a school for every ayatollah we take out and it really would change the balance much here.
That makes no sense. It's not like Iran killed 30k people (nb estimates of the ongoing Gazan war are significantly higher) so we're The Good Guys as long as we keep casualties lower than that. Collateral damage happens in war, but it cannot be justified if the war cannot be justified. If you take out one ayatollah and a hundred civilians, you need to be able to justify why that is a morally acceptable tradeoff. "He was a really bad guy" isn't it. Not when there are numerous functionally identical really bad guys available to to take over because he's just a senior cog in a machine, not a load-bearing element.
And it really has to made clear: the US is not trying to democratize Iran, so these civilian casualties cannot be justified on that front.
We don't know how many iran killed, from what I can gather one can be justified in believing anywhere between 7k(HRANA figure) and 36k(Iran International claim of leaked document) dead in just a few days.
We don't have a well articulated war aim, you won't hear me defending Trump on that front. But the US would obviously be thrilled if this could democratize Iran and at least from Trump telling the people if iran that this is their only opportunity to take back their country is a possibility he seems to desire.
But my origin point is that if you're squeamish about civilian deaths then accidentally hitting a school building is a rounding error in the ongoing tragedy that is Iran.
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