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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   13459 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026

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A tiny note on the war

In the previous thread, I got some pushback for suggesting that not only did the US strike the Iranian school in Minab, killing 170 children or something like that, but perhaps it did so intentionally (or at least without remorse for the possible consequences of erroneous targeting). I admit that wasn't fully sincere. I realize that, even morals aside, there is no perceived military value in bombing children, at least not for the US (I do think Israelis may target children of IRGC officers out of their usual Bronze Age blood feud sentiment, Oct 7, Gaza and all, seen enough of their remarks to this effect; but then again they don't operate Tomahawks).

Well now the question on it having been an American strike appears settled. As for the intent – it's not so straightforward:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has gutted the Pentagon oversight offices that would have investigated the recent strike on an Iranian girls’ school — a move that has degraded America’s ability to protect civilians amid its largest air campaign in decades.
The Pentagon chief last year slashed offices that didn’t contribute to his goal of “lethality,” including the group that assists in limiting risk to civilians, known as the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence. Around 200 employees who worked on the issue, including at that office, have been reduced by about 90 percent, according to two current and former officials and a person familiar with the effort. The team that handles civilian casualties at Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, has dropped from 10 to one.
Hegseth can’t close the offices because they are approved by Congress. But he has managed to make them nearly inoperable, according to the people, as the Pentagon investigates its responsibility in what could be the worst U.S.-led killing of civilians since 2003. Iranian state media said the strike killed about 170 children and 14 teachers.
“The fact that our secretary of Defense, that our Central Command commander, cannot actually tell us whether or not they dropped a bomb in this location, that is so unbelievably unacceptable,” said Wes Bryant, the Pentagon’s former chief of civilian harm assessments until last year. “It just points even more to recklessness in this, in the entire planning and execution of this campaign, the fact that they don’t have any idea.”

Does it matter if there was no intent if the United States, as of now, also has a revealed preference to not bother with minimizing such risks, in favor of «lethality» and some zany Judeo-Christian nationalism courtesy the power-tripping macho TV host Pete Hegseth? I believe it does, but marginally; about as much as those girls matter to Lethal Pete. I rest my case.

More to the point. It's remarkable that there's so little discussion of contemporary historical events on here. I won't criticize anyone, be the change you want etc.; but what we are seeing is pretty astonishing from the culture war standpoint. Could someone like Pete be imaginable as the Secretary of War – no, Defense – in 2023? 2019, even? 2016? It looks as if the politically dominant culture of the United States changed overnight. Does everyone just like it too much to find the change worth commenting on?

There are an amazing number of people responding with, essentially, "shit happens in war", seemingly with giving any further thought to questions like "can we make shit happen less in war?", "does what we're trying to achieve justify this shit?", and "should the fact that shit happens in war make us more cautious about going to war?"

Christ

Alternately 'you can never do anything potentially mean since there might be unintended targets' doesn't really allow for anything resembling a productive society. Tradeoffs are going to have to be made, this is the logic that leads to massive second-order impacts from things like COVID lockdowns since people just cannot process the scale of any large endeavor

You can't use the general existence of unpleasant tradeoffs to justify a particular set of actions; you need to actually articulate a defense of why a particular tradeoff is worth it. Here we have a bunch of people saying "I don't care, shit happens."

This is, at best, callous and least. It very easily turns into self-justifying brutality.

The problem is that this argument is a soldier, and nothing more. The entire point of bringing up the girl's school deaths and pinning them on the US is to say "TRUMP BAD FOR ATTACKING IRAN". It stops there. Both sides know this, so one side tries as hard as it can to pin the deaths on the US (including claiming as proof footage of a missile attack on the base next door) and reports uncritically the ever-increasing death count (including a surprising number of boys, for girl's school) claimed by Iran. The other side denies regardless of the evidence, and reports fishy stories about Iranian missile misfires. If the attack was definitely shown to be an Iranian accident or an intercepted US attack, the first side would switch to instead blaming the US because the incident wouldn't have happened had the US not attacked. If it was definitely shown that it was a mistargeted US attack, the second side would blame Iran for making the war necessary in the first place.

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