Seeing as it was a "double tap" it was clearly a deliberate target. Bomb the school, wait until officers from the nearby base with kids at the school arrive to try and rescue their daughters and hit it again. Clearly a war crime, possibly using Israeli targeting information, which clouds which State is ultimately responsible.
Highly unlikely an entire chain of military personnel knew it was a school and was like, "yeah get em good, and lets see when they come scrambling in for their kids corpses".
Do you hear yourself? Have you ever in your life met someone this sadistic? It was definitely a mistake. One might argue criminal negligence, but there is no way everyone in the loop here is just pure evil. That just isn't how people think in North America. It is unfathomable that a team of US military (people with families of their own no doubt), would all nod along and agree with your contention.
If the US military was unethical, it wouldn't have lost in Afghanistan.
The problem is fighting unethical enemies, because they do shit like use ambulances as troop transport, have soldiers dress the same as civilians, and given any kid old enough to shoot a rifle.
To your post more specifically, is there is no one holding these unethical enemies responsible. There are no history books, or journalists, or wikipedia articles about the insane shit they do.
The Taliban has a base where they truck in young boys to "service" the officers and it's lost to time. The US has a single ethics catastrophe, and they are held up for it for decades...
pattern is there: first hit a public place (market, ...), then when people are scrambling to help, hit them again. "double-tap".
Seen in Gaza, Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, ...
It's quite cynical, the topic has its own Wikipedia page:
The accusation is not "let's kill some kids", the accusation was "the target is in a school, bomb it anyway to get the target". Much of these targeted assassinations in the early stage of this campaign consisted of blowing up entire city blocks where a target was believed to be. They actually believed they would get pro-Israel people in the government if they killed the current crop.
> Highly unlikely an entire chain of military personnel knew it was a school and was like, "yeah get em good, and lets see when they come scrambling in for their kids corpses".
When you phrase it like that, I firmly believe that's exactly what happened.
> Do you hear yourself? Have you ever in your life met someone this sadistic?
This isn't necessarily driven by sadism. A sociopath following an amoral (immoral) decision process where they draft a plan to decapitate military leadership by trying to attract them to a place to then kill them would fit the description.
And from a moral point of view, is it justifiable to kill military personnel in a military engagement that's not even framed as a war?
Yes, the definition of war crime is not "intentionally targeted building" it is "intentionally targeted building that it knew was non-military and full of civilians". If you plausibly believed it to be a military target, then it's plausibly not a war crime.
The question about whether US launched the missiles is not really in dispute, the intent and knowledge is in dispute. NYT did a great analysis essentially concluding it was plausibly a mistake, not an intentional or indiscriminate civilian attack.
TFA addresses this. It doesn't matter if it was a "mistake": the US acted recklessly "[amounting] to more than mere negligence," even when warned by their own commanders. Ignorance doesn't excuse crimes.
> The UN mission concluded that the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school constituted an indiscriminate attack causing civilian deaths and damage to civilian infrastructure, amounting to a war crime under international law.
> According to the report, the US relied on intelligence suggesting a senior Iranian military commander was present at the site but failed to adequately verify the information before launching the strike.
> Investigators said the failure to update targeting intelligence and confirm the building was a military objective amounted to more than mere negligence.
> “Rather, the US directed the strikes at the building of the school while being aware of a substantial risk of striking a civilian object and acting recklessly as regards the possibility that this would happen.”
How can anyone take this argument seriously when the DoW was simultaneously committing dozens of extrajudicial executions of small boat users in the Gulf?
I am not defending this morally, but these are clearly a group of the least competent stewards of the military in a long while. They were "completely clear on OPSEC", with a left-leaning Atlantic reporter in the signal group chat. This bombing also coalesced support in Iran and had a big rally around the flag effect. Data in Iran is hard and the timetable was extremely fast, again, due to incompetence and the inability to constrain a vassal. So its appalling to say, but a bunch of morons with LLMS and outdated targeting, pushed to meet the objectives of corrupt idiots is almost certainly the cause. I personally consider it a war crime, but I am not sure if it meets the legal definition.
What is there to take seriously regarding this strike other than the facts as presented?
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.
Nothing in the UN report claims that this was an intentional strike on civilians. They make NO claim to that effect.
The claim is that "the U.S. failed in its obligation to do everything feasible to verify that it was a military objective. Updating targeting information and acting upon such information falls within the category of feasible precautions an attacking party is required to take under IHL . . . the strikes are a violation of the obligation to distinguish between civilian objects.
And:
" the Mission concluded that when targeting the school building, the U.S
acted wilfully, that is with the requisite mental element of recklessness (
dolus eventualis)."
And (finally):
". . . the Mission found that these strikes constituted an
indiscriminate attack in violation of the principle of distinction."
The UN report's claim is that the US negligently used outdated information which led them to think this compound hit was still a military target.
It's evident you didn't read the report and submitted a shitpost.
Colloquially, I think it is well accepted that US launched the missiles. The question is whether they indiscriminately targeted civilians.
NYT did an excellent analysis showing that the US probably did intentionally target the building, believing it to be part of the nearby compound that received several direct strikes. This analysis is really good [1]
The definition of war crime is not "Killed civilians" it is "targeted civilians" or "reckless indiscriminate attacks". My understanding of the NYT analysis is that this was very plausibly misunderstood to still be part of the iran national guard compound.
Everyone gets their own opinion on this. There were 900 or so strikes in the first 12h, and only one school hit, and that school was actually part of the compound before. A horrific accident that was brought on by unnecessary hostilities, i think.
I'll add the definition from the Rome statute that, by my read, establishes a war crime when there is intent to commit the civilian strikes:
Unless otherwise provided, a person shall be criminally responsible and liable for punishment for a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court only if the material elements are committed with intent and knowledge.
A mistake of fact shall be a ground for excluding criminal responsibility only if it negates the mental element required by the crime.
Still this is a legal defense that might plausibly be used during a trial, not necessarily a reason to skip a trial.
From that text, it sure sounds to me that these attacks are going to be legal. The article describes them as 'indescriminate', but they were specifically targetted based on a mistake of fact.
There's certainly evidence that the US was neglegent in relying on old information without verifying. That's serious and reprehensible, but I don't know that that rises to the level of a war crime.
I'll add that it's not what I want my country's military to be doing and that if I had any power, there would be consequences for the people involved in decision making that led to this, as well as changes in procedure to reduce this type of mistake in the future, and a settlement paid to the people affected by this strike.
I think the dishonesty is that if the tables were turned, the overwhelming chorus would be
"Why the fuck would you convert former soldier barracks, still located on an active base, to a kids school and never update the publicly available maps? How fucking dumb are you?"
Hegseth's military had woefully outdated intelligence. And because he's a news host and NOT a war chief, he ended up ordering the destruction of a school full of girls so they could distract the news from the epstein files.
Your claim is that hegseth directed the US Navy to launch an attack on a building it knew to be a school full of kids for the negative headlines, because those negative headlines would distract from the Epstein files outrage?
You seem to be confusing everyone's stances (incompetence vs malice). Some people in this thread believe it was incompetence and therefore not a war crime, and others believe it was malicious and therefore a war crime. I personally don't think stupidity is a good legal defense but what do I know.
I remember that too. Initially they tried to go the "Iran caused this". Then the analysis quickly showed that it were US weapons. Suddenly the "Iran caused this" narrative disappeared. There are professional liars in media. Their job is to lie and obfuscate.
Well, if the map image I saw initially after the bombing was correct, then the facility did not used to be a school. The building had different, military purposes as it was attached to a military base, and later was converted into a school. My understanding is that the AI that was used to facilitate this attack was trained on maps where the building was still used for military purposes some years back.
It absolutely does not excuse anything, but I suppose that might explain the denial at first. I cannot explain any further denial though.
The US even said it was Iran who did it. The US has literally become the least trustworthy nation in the world by lying about everything, threatening to go to war against allies for no other reason than wanting the land...
This has very little value when everything gets prefaced with "in my opinion". Government officials should be held to a higher standard when it comes to releasing these types of statements.
Especially when the whole point of such lies is to kill the story before it gets much public interest. A device the sunny state of Israel uses all the time and to great effect.
I mean, for the general public it was pretty clear the US was very likely to be at fault here. But for a UN report you generally expect a way higher level of evidence and standard for the analysis (in practice it’s not always the case though, some UN reports are sometimes fairly shallow, always good to skim through them and not rely only on the reporting if you want the nuanced story)
Trump claimed it was an accident. Then again he seems to be similar to Putin: both lie almost all of the time.
Edit: Actually, others pointed out that at first the narrative was that Iran did it. That's indeed true that the media used that; perhaps one can even build up a timestamp of media reporting falseness here. I forgot which media reported the above lie first.
Then do something about it - inform yourself about the other days.
The USA has been dropping bombs on innocent people on average for the past 25 years every 15 minutes.
The only force capable of reining in the US’ out of control military industrial complex, is the American people themselves. Until they do, the atrocities continue unabated.
I can't even get the government to take masked federal agents off my streets, how the hell am I going to rein (not reign) in the military industrial complex?
Indeed, it may be too late for you to do anything effective about it.
What the war criminals that have run your country for decades have done to other nations, they are now going to do to yours.
Protest, inform yourself, demand that your peers are informed, and do not for one instance just let apathy rule. Get out there on the streets every single time, write your representatives, use whatever tepid remains of your ‘democracy’ you have left. Divest yourself of any investments in the military industrial complex - and be damned sure you don’t support it, in any way whatsoever.
Demand justice for your own war criminals at a higher pitch and tempo than the call to eradicate cultures deemed inferior by those very war criminals.
What they do to other nations they will do to yours. Never forget this.
I was in NYC during a no king protest, it was the lamest public demonstration I ever experienced given how bad the circumstances are. On a weekend, everything was done after ~2-3h, then back to work as usual on Monday. If you miss that short period of time you wouldn’t even notice something happened.
If there is one thing you can all learn from Europe is how to do a protest that cannot be ignored by your administration
Get involved with your local dems at a grassroots level, and help break the incumbents that are hell-bent on maintaining the status quo. You need fresh faces in congress that don't believe it's all just a game.
You can still vote this government out and organize your community to help with that. Remember the three boxes - soap, ballot, and ammo. You still haven't exhausted box #1 and should use box #2 really well this year.
> how the hell am I going to rein (not reign) in the military industrial complex?
Make sure to vote in this November! Encourage your friends and family to do so as well. Start a YouTube channel; get yourself heard. Reach out to DNC, obviously red party is not an option, tell them you want to help with outreach.
For some context the school shared walls with and used to be part of an active military base. [1]
That being said bombing children is always a tragedy and the US should be doing everything it can to learn from this and not make these kinds of mistakes.
> Were you complaining when Obama killed US citizens and kids with drone strikes?
Your attempt to try to spin the morality of bombing innocent civilians as a mere domestic partisan issue is disconcerting. I mean, this site has a diverse international readership, and a UN report on potential war crimes is hardly a domestic issue.
Yes? Everyone knows you’re not supposed to ask questions you don’t already know the answer to when trying to make a point.
Obama was absolutely roasted for his drone strikes by all but the lamest and most feckless of centrists. Too bad that Trump far surpassed his records and took the top leaderboard spot.
You should feel angry, and you should be channeling that anger into constructive action.
For now, this means voting Democrat and supporting Democrats for office.
Donald Trump has turned the Republican party into a cult of personality to support a kleptocracy. The GOP is no longer the party of conservative values. The rule of law, respect for traditional mores or institutions, and personal integrity have all been defenestrated by the Trump administration.
Are the Democrats perfect? Of course not. But under the current system, the United States has a zero-sum two party system, and this means voting for one of the two parties. Making room for third parties means adjusting the rules (eg. ranked choice voting, or other). These ideas are worth pursuing. As long as we're stuck in a two party system, this means voting for the lesser of two evils.
Nihilists will scoff at this and point to everything wrong that happened under Obama or Biden. They'll says Democrats are no better than Republicans. They're wrong. At best, they're misguided. At worst, they're actually trying to bring an end to democratic government (that's a lower-case "d" for democracy).
The Democrats are imperfect. The Republican party under the current leadership are far, far worse. It's not even close.
You can also be proud that your country is about to send another 40-60 thousand 1 ton bombs for free to a country that used the previous lesser sized free batch to kill 20 thousnad children in the most horrific ways imaginable.
I guess it was judged a success so more was deemed appropriate.
Yes because normal people have tomahawks they can shoot to schools in their basements, and it required a court to find out who was responsible: United States, Dr. Evil, or the Cookie Monster?
Doesn’t it concern some of you how strongly and confidently you “know” some things that you have no concept of other than what your screen has showed you?
The number of posts of absolute certainty is sort of fucked up.
Whenever I read the US or Israel wanting to free Iran from it's "horrible regime", remember this incident plus the hospitals targeted during their attack.
And remember how Iran slaughtered tens of thousands of its own citizens a few weeks prior. And the continual killing of Iranian citizens having differing political options of the regime.
War is never pretty or perfect. Winning a war comes with great cost
Killing civilians and destroying infrastructure in the name of saving oppressed people; it's quite impressive such low-effort imperialist propaganda still works after Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya.
> And remember how Iran slaughtered tens of thousands of its own citizens a few weeks prior. And the continual killing of Iranian citizens having differing political options of the regime
So, that's over, then? We changed the regime and now things are better?
The purpose of starting a war is to extract concessions from the other side that you were unable to get through diplomacy, not to kill a lot of people because you think they deserve it. So far Iran has not been willing to make any concessions that it wasn't willing to make before the start of the war, and has shown that it can disrupt Gulf oil exports, which it didn't do prior to the US starting the war. Nothing has been achieved besides pointless bloodshed.
Eh, as much as I might dislike the government of my country, I think I believe I would hate a lot more the country that decided it was a good idea to blow schoolgirls from my country into minced meat.
You talk about it as if America cared one bit about those citizens. This war just made the regime stronger.
If America succeeded, it would change the head, steal oil and keep the regime there to keep control on locals. Like in Venezuela. Maybe committing few atrocities on top of it.
But also of course, it would then invade Cuba and Greenland and god knows who.
Invading a country and wanting to steal their resources at any cost, a cost as large as needed, is a crime against humanity.
The USA is not defending itself, it is just trying to control Irans oil to increase the power of American economic elites. Billionaires want more power, children, women and men die indiscriminately because of that.
And, you are totally right. Billionaires does not care that winning a war comes with great cost, because the cost is for USA service men and for all Iranians.
GPS spies on everyone. Flock cameras too. Meta-spy glasses continue that trend.
Now officials tell the public "we used old maps" when bombing a school with kids. That's a deliberate lie. It wastes our time to even want to lend any credibility to wanting to believe such a lie.
Point of clarification - GPS/GNSS does not work that way. The GPS in your phone only _listens_ to GPS signals and is not transmitting to/observable by the satellite. https://ciechanow.ski/gps/
I think what the commenter meant is that by using the GPS in mobile devices, these devices and their apps report their locations to various other places, including data collectors, which is probably how the US determined there was an Iranian commander at or near the school.
One great thing about the Internet is it lets you see how other people live, if you want to go looking for it. Think about all the things you want in your life: a house to live in, a car to drive, children (maybe), your children being able to get an education safely, good health, time with family and friends and so on.
The point is that Iranian families want all of those things too. Because they're people just like you are. You can see videos of ordinary Iranians going to the market, going to work, having family over, eating a meal together and so on. It saddens and frightens me how easy it seems to dehumanize other people and basically be OK with killing them en masse.
Now I want you to think about what you'd do if you sent your 11 year old daughter to school one day and some foreign government double tapped that school with 2 Tomahawk missiles killing almost 200 people, most of them children.
We kind of do know because it's basically what happened after 9/11. We spent $8T+ on a 20 year war to kill over a million people in vengeance that really didn't do anything else. Remember that Afghanistan offered to hand bin Laden over after 9/11 [1].
The Trump administration tried (badly) lying about what happened. First it never happened. Second, it wasn't us. But nobody else has Tomahawk missiles so that was never going to work.
The only question is where the targeting information came from and what verification was done. I am not convinced that Israel didn't supply this information so the US military would commit atrocities to keep them in a war that Israel had desperately wanted for decades. Every president since Reagan had been begged by Israeli PMs to invade Iran. All of them refused. It's widely believed that Netanyahu threatened to use nukes if Obama wouldn't do it. Obama called his bluff. Until Trump. And here we are.
While vacationing in Colorado I was approached by a young man and woman who wanted to tell me about Christianity, towards the end I told them that I do no view Christians in America as good people as group, and gave them various reasons why, the support of Trump being a main reason. Supporting someone so overtly evil while pretending to be righteous and godly was clearly contradictory to me, the whole situation caused me to view religious people not as misinformed but actively disingenuous (those smart enough to know better anyway). He snapped back with "OBAMA BOMBED A SCHOOL"
Which, at the time I thought, yes its bad that US presidents almost all are willing to do war when it isn't a good idea, but Obama isn't the president right now and I think you can expect Trump to bomb some schools too man.
and here we are.
As an side, fuck every single person here that supported or made excuses for the GOP in the last two decades, I will never forgive you.
Christians aren't bad people. Its just that the older ones (and a few young ones) get their information from terrible sources. They watch Fox News, where every day Trump is presented as the hero fighting against the evil democrats. They don't notice the propaganda like a fish doesn't notice water. Bad inputs bad outputs.
Christians aren't bad people, but it's undeniable that the one demographic that supports Trump more than any other are Christians. Trump is the face, heart and soul of American Christianity. Where else are Christians arguing that genocide on behalf of Israel is a moral imperative, or that empathy is a sin?
If so many Christians were so easily swayed by hateful propaganda then that's still a fault and failure of the religion, as is the utter failure of the "good" Christians to do anything about it. People aren't machines that blindly process inputs into outputs, at least not in any useful sense that takes morality and ethics into account. People have agency, they're responsible for their own decisions. And these people have a Bible probably at arms reach at all times and they know what it says.
>"Christians aren't bad people, but it's undeniable that the one demographic that supports Trump more than any other are Christians."
Christianity itself really has little to do with it. I think it's more so that "Christian" is just the default cultural identity and worldview of native born Americans who have zero self awareness, thoughtfulness, or perspective on the world. Almost none of them actually believe anything really when you start to ask questions about it. It's just the in-group that they latch on to because they've never had an independent thought in their lives.
the classic gotcha that doesn't work on outsiders that don't care about the partisan devide. All US presidents going back for quite a while are war criminals.
ECHR, UN and ECJ will find any and everything as crime against humanity so it is best to ignore them and make your own judgement. It is like asking ADL if something is antisemitism or SPLC if something is racism - the answer will always be yes, so why bother.
> ECHR, UN and ECJ will find any and everything as crime against humanity
That doesn't make them automatically wrong. This is clearly a crime against humanity.
> It is like asking ADL if something is antisemitism
There is a huge difference between hating Jews and condemning the actions of the Israeli government in occupied Palestine and the support it has from other countries.
Of course I want to see accountability. Two valuable and expensive ammunitions were wasted and pilots were exposed to unnecessary risk due to sloppy intelligence work. Also there should be punishment for the civilian deaths I guess. But unless the school was deliberately targeted because it was a school, double taping on military barracks that are attached to a military base shouldn't be looked as a war crime. USG is under no obligation to have up to date information.
>Following the United States and Israeli attacks on 28 February, the mission found reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in the loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects.
The attacks were obviously not indiscriminate. Indiscriminate is covering an area with napalm and throwing a match.
Wasn't it right next to a military base, and previously used as part of that military base? And therefore a reasonable part of the targeting list that should've gotten more scrutiny but just didn't?
This feels like someone wanted to slander the US military actions, could only find one unambiguously negative thing, so then they pontificated on that.
I don’t understand your attitude. The slaughter of hundreds of children seems genuinely inherently upsetting and unacceptable to me. I don’t see why an element of negligence would make this something to just “not pontificate on” in a court of law or in public discourse.
> This feels like someone wanted to slander the US military actions, could only find one unambiguously negative thing, so then they pontificated on that.
If a soldier on the ground had called in the airstrike, there is a good chance they would be in military prison.
The fact that the administration itself did it means nothing will happen.
Always know what you're shooting at, especially if it changed purposes over a decade ago.
We all know this happened. What I find hilarious in the discussion here is that everyone also knows it was caused by AI replacing humans on the battlefield, but because so many here have deeply conflicted interests they pretend they don’t know and act as though some human somewhere did this intentionally. Greed really corrupts the dialog around military use of AI.
And if you think that America would leave children in that school for longer than 10 minutes after a war was launched against a country hosting such a base or the American mainland if it were under a state of war… well then you are ignorant.
One side values life. The Islamic regime on the other hand has tried to kill me (an Israeli civilian) and has killed tens of thousands of Iranians in January of this year in a few days.
Seeing as it was a "double tap" it was clearly a deliberate target. Bomb the school, wait until officers from the nearby base with kids at the school arrive to try and rescue their daughters and hit it again. Clearly a war crime, possibly using Israeli targeting information, which clouds which State is ultimately responsible.
Highly unlikely an entire chain of military personnel knew it was a school and was like, "yeah get em good, and lets see when they come scrambling in for their kids corpses".
Do you hear yourself? Have you ever in your life met someone this sadistic? It was definitely a mistake. One might argue criminal negligence, but there is no way everyone in the loop here is just pure evil. That just isn't how people think in North America. It is unfathomable that a team of US military (people with families of their own no doubt), would all nod along and agree with your contention.
> It is unfathomable that a team of US military (people with families of their own no doubt), would all nod along and agree with your contention.
The Vietnam and Korean wars would like to have a word.
Your belief that the US military is guided by any kind of moral or ethical line is naïve at best.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Gun_Ri_massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_massacre
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-23427726
If the US military was unethical, it wouldn't have lost in Afghanistan.
The problem is fighting unethical enemies, because they do shit like use ambulances as troop transport, have soldiers dress the same as civilians, and given any kid old enough to shoot a rifle.
To your post more specifically, is there is no one holding these unethical enemies responsible. There are no history books, or journalists, or wikipedia articles about the insane shit they do.
The Taliban has a base where they truck in young boys to "service" the officers and it's lost to time. The US has a single ethics catastrophe, and they are held up for it for decades...
> If the US military was unethical, it wouldn't have lost in Afghanistan
You can be unethical and still profoundly incompetent.
Smoking out villages and shooting everything that moves with cutting edge weaponry doesn't require much competence.
Which is why the US famously won the Vietnam war.
pattern is there: first hit a public place (market, ...), then when people are scrambling to help, hit them again. "double-tap". Seen in Gaza, Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, ... It's quite cynical, the topic has its own Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-tap_strike
The accusation is not "let's kill some kids", the accusation was "the target is in a school, bomb it anyway to get the target". Much of these targeted assassinations in the early stage of this campaign consisted of blowing up entire city blocks where a target was believed to be. They actually believed they would get pro-Israel people in the government if they killed the current crop.
> Have you ever in your life met someone this sadistic?
All the time, on the internet. People will reveal the most deranged opinions when they feel immune from consequences for them.
> Have you ever in your life met someone this sadistic?
Not met anyone personally like that. But I have made sure that I kept good company.
However, there was precedence in the form of Nazi Germany.
Can we be sure without evidence that this administration did not do it knowingly, given how they have been behaving thus far?
> Highly unlikely an entire chain of military personnel knew it was a school and was like, "yeah get em good, and lets see when they come scrambling in for their kids corpses".
When you phrase it like that, I firmly believe that's exactly what happened.
> Do you hear yourself? Have you ever in your life met someone this sadistic?
This isn't necessarily driven by sadism. A sociopath following an amoral (immoral) decision process where they draft a plan to decapitate military leadership by trying to attract them to a place to then kill them would fit the description.
And from a moral point of view, is it justifiable to kill military personnel in a military engagement that's not even framed as a war?
Yes, the definition of war crime is not "intentionally targeted building" it is "intentionally targeted building that it knew was non-military and full of civilians". If you plausibly believed it to be a military target, then it's plausibly not a war crime.
The question about whether US launched the missiles is not really in dispute, the intent and knowledge is in dispute. NYT did a great analysis essentially concluding it was plausibly a mistake, not an intentional or indiscriminate civilian attack.
More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49739018#49741081
TFA addresses this. It doesn't matter if it was a "mistake": the US acted recklessly "[amounting] to more than mere negligence," even when warned by their own commanders. Ignorance doesn't excuse crimes.
> The UN mission concluded that the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school constituted an indiscriminate attack causing civilian deaths and damage to civilian infrastructure, amounting to a war crime under international law.
> According to the report, the US relied on intelligence suggesting a senior Iranian military commander was present at the site but failed to adequately verify the information before launching the strike.
> Investigators said the failure to update targeting intelligence and confirm the building was a military objective amounted to more than mere negligence.
> “Rather, the US directed the strikes at the building of the school while being aware of a substantial risk of striking a civilian object and acting recklessly as regards the possibility that this would happen.”
How can anyone take this argument seriously when the DoW was simultaneously committing dozens of extrajudicial executions of small boat users in the Gulf?
I am not defending this morally, but these are clearly a group of the least competent stewards of the military in a long while. They were "completely clear on OPSEC", with a left-leaning Atlantic reporter in the signal group chat. This bombing also coalesced support in Iran and had a big rally around the flag effect. Data in Iran is hard and the timetable was extremely fast, again, due to incompetence and the inability to constrain a vassal. So its appalling to say, but a bunch of morons with LLMS and outdated targeting, pushed to meet the objectives of corrupt idiots is almost certainly the cause. I personally consider it a war crime, but I am not sure if it meets the legal definition.
What is there to take seriously regarding this strike other than the facts as presented?
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.
In all sincerity, people take it seriously because it helps them sleep at night.
Nothing in the UN report claims that this was an intentional strike on civilians. They make NO claim to that effect.
The claim is that "the U.S. failed in its obligation to do everything feasible to verify that it was a military objective. Updating targeting information and acting upon such information falls within the category of feasible precautions an attacking party is required to take under IHL . . . the strikes are a violation of the obligation to distinguish between civilian objects.
And:
" the Mission concluded that when targeting the school building, the U.S acted wilfully, that is with the requisite mental element of recklessness ( dolus eventualis)."
And (finally):
". . . the Mission found that these strikes constituted an indiscriminate attack in violation of the principle of distinction."
The UN report's claim is that the US negligently used outdated information which led them to think this compound hit was still a military target.
It's evident you didn't read the report and submitted a shitpost.
Who will investigate war crimes these days against the US?
The article doesn't state that it was a double tap. This is the first I'm hearing.
That was never a question right?
Colloquially, I think it is well accepted that US launched the missiles. The question is whether they indiscriminately targeted civilians.
NYT did an excellent analysis showing that the US probably did intentionally target the building, believing it to be part of the nearby compound that received several direct strikes. This analysis is really good [1]
The definition of war crime is not "Killed civilians" it is "targeted civilians" or "reckless indiscriminate attacks". My understanding of the NYT analysis is that this was very plausibly misunderstood to still be part of the iran national guard compound.
Everyone gets their own opinion on this. There were 900 or so strikes in the first 12h, and only one school hit, and that school was actually part of the compound before. A horrific accident that was brought on by unnecessary hostilities, i think.
1: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/us/politics/iran-school-m...
I'll add the definition from the Rome statute that, by my read, establishes a war crime when there is intent to commit the civilian strikes:
Still this is a legal defense that might plausibly be used during a trial, not necessarily a reason to skip a trial.From that text, it sure sounds to me that these attacks are going to be legal. The article describes them as 'indescriminate', but they were specifically targetted based on a mistake of fact.
There's certainly evidence that the US was neglegent in relying on old information without verifying. That's serious and reprehensible, but I don't know that that rises to the level of a war crime.
I'll add that it's not what I want my country's military to be doing and that if I had any power, there would be consequences for the people involved in decision making that led to this, as well as changes in procedure to reduce this type of mistake in the future, and a settlement paid to the people affected by this strike.
To recap:
A Iranian military structure was converted into a school.
After conversion, the rest of the naval base remained there (< 100m away).
Missile strikes hit both the base and the adjacent school.
---
FYI, it's not unusual for schools to be part of military bases. The U.S. itself operates over a 100. [1]
[1] https://www.dodea.edu/
I think the dishonesty is that if the tables were turned, the overwhelming chorus would be
"Why the fuck would you convert former soldier barracks, still located on an active base, to a kids school and never update the publicly available maps? How fucking dumb are you?"
US army used to have unit responsible to unsure this dont happen. Guess who dismantled it due to being too woke and not lethal enough.
Hegseth's military had woefully outdated intelligence. And because he's a news host and NOT a war chief, he ended up ordering the destruction of a school full of girls so they could distract the news from the epstein files.
Your claim is that hegseth directed the US Navy to launch an attack on a building it knew to be a school full of kids for the negative headlines, because those negative headlines would distract from the Epstein files outrage?
No no no, they didn't know that it was a school because they're incompetent, but ALSO knew it was as school because they're evil.
You seem to be confusing everyone's stances (incompetence vs malice). Some people in this thread believe it was incompetence and therefore not a war crime, and others believe it was malicious and therefore a war crime. I personally don't think stupidity is a good legal defense but what do I know.
Well the US government tried to deny it was a school at first, so that's put to bed at least.
Yeah if I remember it was Iranian tomahawks that caused it.
(Edit: I am merely relaying what they said, not that I in anyway subscribe to it)
I remember that too. Initially they tried to go the "Iran caused this". Then the analysis quickly showed that it were US weapons. Suddenly the "Iran caused this" narrative disappeared. There are professional liars in media. Their job is to lie and obfuscate.
>the analysis quickly showed
Wasn't the analysis a literal image with the Tomahawk caught mid air, clearly identifiable?
Well, if the map image I saw initially after the bombing was correct, then the facility did not used to be a school. The building had different, military purposes as it was attached to a military base, and later was converted into a school. My understanding is that the AI that was used to facilitate this attack was trained on maps where the building was still used for military purposes some years back.
It absolutely does not excuse anything, but I suppose that might explain the denial at first. I cannot explain any further denial though.
The US even said it was Iran who did it. The US has literally become the least trustworthy nation in the world by lying about everything, threatening to go to war against allies for no other reason than wanting the land...
Overstated.
It was never given as a fact.
Was literally "in my opinion" speculation. A dumb opinion? Okay. But not statement of fact.
This has very little value when everything gets prefaced with "in my opinion". Government officials should be held to a higher standard when it comes to releasing these types of statements.
Especially when the whole point of such lies is to kill the story before it gets much public interest. A device the sunny state of Israel uses all the time and to great effect.
I mean, for the general public it was pretty clear the US was very likely to be at fault here. But for a UN report you generally expect a way higher level of evidence and standard for the analysis (in practice it’s not always the case though, some UN reports are sometimes fairly shallow, always good to skim through them and not rely only on the reporting if you want the nuanced story)
They’d like us to believe otherwise (the administration)
The trump defenders are oddly quiet in this thread.
Trump claimed it was an accident. Then again he seems to be similar to Putin: both lie almost all of the time.
Edit: Actually, others pointed out that at first the narrative was that Iran did it. That's indeed true that the media used that; perhaps one can even build up a timestamp of media reporting falseness here. I forgot which media reported the above lie first.
Yes which is why this is an uninteresting thread
> failed to adequately verify the information before launching the strike
I'm so proud to be an American today :-(
Then do something about it - inform yourself about the other days.
The USA has been dropping bombs on innocent people on average for the past 25 years every 15 minutes.
The only force capable of reining in the US’ out of control military industrial complex, is the American people themselves. Until they do, the atrocities continue unabated.
I can't even get the government to take masked federal agents off my streets, how the hell am I going to rein (not reign) in the military industrial complex?
Indeed, it may be too late for you to do anything effective about it.
What the war criminals that have run your country for decades have done to other nations, they are now going to do to yours.
Protest, inform yourself, demand that your peers are informed, and do not for one instance just let apathy rule. Get out there on the streets every single time, write your representatives, use whatever tepid remains of your ‘democracy’ you have left. Divest yourself of any investments in the military industrial complex - and be damned sure you don’t support it, in any way whatsoever.
Demand justice for your own war criminals at a higher pitch and tempo than the call to eradicate cultures deemed inferior by those very war criminals.
What they do to other nations they will do to yours. Never forget this.
Don't you guys have your famous 2nd amendment to protect your democracy from tyrants?
No that’s just for school shootings and LARPers.
That’s all we have left. Speeches, voting, and juries will not save us from a system this corrupt. The ongoing civil war will turn bloody eventually.
Only local tyranny, like the county government.
Americans were literally more up in arms over social distancing and masks than any thing Trump has ever done.
I was in NYC during a no king protest, it was the lamest public demonstration I ever experienced given how bad the circumstances are. On a weekend, everything was done after ~2-3h, then back to work as usual on Monday. If you miss that short period of time you wouldn’t even notice something happened.
If there is one thing you can all learn from Europe is how to do a protest that cannot be ignored by your administration
Get involved with your local dems at a grassroots level, and help break the incumbents that are hell-bent on maintaining the status quo. You need fresh faces in congress that don't believe it's all just a game.
I can’t stop them from tracking our posts to use against us under NPSM7 at some point in the future.
Don’t use political violence, intimidation, and domestic terror.
Use your democracy while you still can.
What democracy?
You can still vote this government out and organize your community to help with that. Remember the three boxes - soap, ballot, and ammo. You still haven't exhausted box #1 and should use box #2 really well this year.
Tyrants feed on the belief they can't be removed.
Why are you so convinved that the current administration leaves, even after defeat?
It's not gonna be low-stakes protests like No Kings, I'll tell you that.
> how the hell am I going to rein (not reign) in the military industrial complex?
Make sure to vote in this November! Encourage your friends and family to do so as well. Start a YouTube channel; get yourself heard. Reach out to DNC, obviously red party is not an option, tell them you want to help with outreach.
> Make sure to vote in this November!
Make sure to vote blue in this November!
For some context the school shared walls with and used to be part of an active military base. [1]
That being said bombing children is always a tragedy and the US should be doing everything it can to learn from this and not make these kinds of mistakes.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Minab_school_attack
Are these the same lessons they should have learned from bombing Afghan weddings or Iraqi funerals?
Were you complaining when Obama killed US citizens and kids with drone strikes? Or does the outrage have conditions?
> Were you complaining when Obama killed US citizens and kids with drone strikes?
Your attempt to try to spin the morality of bombing innocent civilians as a mere domestic partisan issue is disconcerting. I mean, this site has a diverse international readership, and a UN report on potential war crimes is hardly a domestic issue.
Yes? Everyone knows you’re not supposed to ask questions you don’t already know the answer to when trying to make a point.
Obama was absolutely roasted for his drone strikes by all but the lamest and most feckless of centrists. Too bad that Trump far surpassed his records and took the top leaderboard spot.
Where is that leaderboard?
I am very sorry this is happening to your country. I hope you manage to fix it.
Better late than never to look past the propaganda, I guess.
It's been like that every single time you guys went to the middle east, not just "today" lmao
Some of it is publicly available on videos for 15+ years, nobody cares: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0
You should feel angry, and you should be channeling that anger into constructive action.
For now, this means voting Democrat and supporting Democrats for office.
Donald Trump has turned the Republican party into a cult of personality to support a kleptocracy. The GOP is no longer the party of conservative values. The rule of law, respect for traditional mores or institutions, and personal integrity have all been defenestrated by the Trump administration.
Are the Democrats perfect? Of course not. But under the current system, the United States has a zero-sum two party system, and this means voting for one of the two parties. Making room for third parties means adjusting the rules (eg. ranked choice voting, or other). These ideas are worth pursuing. As long as we're stuck in a two party system, this means voting for the lesser of two evils.
Nihilists will scoff at this and point to everything wrong that happened under Obama or Biden. They'll says Democrats are no better than Republicans. They're wrong. At best, they're misguided. At worst, they're actually trying to bring an end to democratic government (that's a lower-case "d" for democracy).
The Democrats are imperfect. The Republican party under the current leadership are far, far worse. It's not even close.
Get out and vote.
You can also be proud that your country is about to send another 40-60 thousand 1 ton bombs for free to a country that used the previous lesser sized free batch to kill 20 thousnad children in the most horrific ways imaginable.
I guess it was judged a success so more was deemed appropriate.
"Hey Claude, where should I bomb Iran? Make no mistakes."
So... what's gonna be done about it? The recent precedent has been to invade the country, grab the president and try them.
A very good one minute summary of exactly what is about to happen: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2Whrat_Rn0I
If anyone else got their hopes up: this was a funny video not a serious reply
This is a flagrant mischaracterization and you should be ashamed. They even issued a retraction: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5SZYz7lZRRI
Yes because normal people have tomahawks they can shoot to schools in their basements, and it required a court to find out who was responsible: United States, Dr. Evil, or the Cookie Monster?
I don't know, Cookie Monster is pretty suspicious. Never trust a junkie.
Yes but I'm sure there was oil under the school and it was all for the best. After all "it’s more fun doing it this way."
I'm gonna guess they will blame AI and say we need more AI safety, bonus if they claim it was an open weight model.
let me guess, the end result of this will be "strong condemnation"?
I hope it was not deliberate but it may have been. Blowing up the kids of military generals is a strategic move when you ignore the "rules of war".
Doesn’t it concern some of you how strongly and confidently you “know” some things that you have no concept of other than what your screen has showed you?
The number of posts of absolute certainty is sort of fucked up.
Water is wet
Whenever I read the US or Israel wanting to free Iran from it's "horrible regime", remember this incident plus the hospitals targeted during their attack.
And remember how Iran slaughtered tens of thousands of its own citizens a few weeks prior. And the continual killing of Iranian citizens having differing political options of the regime.
War is never pretty or perfect. Winning a war comes with great cost
Killing civilians and destroying infrastructure in the name of saving oppressed people; it's quite impressive such low-effort imperialist propaganda still works after Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya.
> And remember how Iran slaughtered tens of thousands of its own citizens a few weeks prior. And the continual killing of Iranian citizens having differing political options of the regime
So, that's over, then? We changed the regime and now things are better?
The purpose of starting a war is to extract concessions from the other side that you were unable to get through diplomacy, not to kill a lot of people because you think they deserve it. So far Iran has not been willing to make any concessions that it wasn't willing to make before the start of the war, and has shown that it can disrupt Gulf oil exports, which it didn't do prior to the US starting the war. Nothing has been achieved besides pointless bloodshed.
Iran was attack as it was making concessions.
> And remember how Iran slaughtered tens of thousands of its own citizens a few weeks prior.
Yes? How is that a reason to kill even more Iranians, especially schoolgirls?
Yes nothing says we care about you and your citizens then destroying a little girls school. Really helps enforce the message of love and peace.
Eh, as much as I might dislike the government of my country, I think I believe I would hate a lot more the country that decided it was a good idea to blow schoolgirls from my country into minced meat.
You talk about it as if America cared one bit about those citizens. This war just made the regime stronger.
If America succeeded, it would change the head, steal oil and keep the regime there to keep control on locals. Like in Venezuela. Maybe committing few atrocities on top of it.
But also of course, it would then invade Cuba and Greenland and god knows who.
> Winning a war comes with great cost
Invading a country and wanting to steal their resources at any cost, a cost as large as needed, is a crime against humanity.
The USA is not defending itself, it is just trying to control Irans oil to increase the power of American economic elites. Billionaires want more power, children, women and men die indiscriminately because of that.
And, you are totally right. Billionaires does not care that winning a war comes with great cost, because the cost is for USA service men and for all Iranians.
GPS spies on everyone. Flock cameras too. Meta-spy glasses continue that trend.
Now officials tell the public "we used old maps" when bombing a school with kids. That's a deliberate lie. It wastes our time to even want to lend any credibility to wanting to believe such a lie.
> GPS spies on everyone.
Point of clarification - GPS/GNSS does not work that way. The GPS in your phone only _listens_ to GPS signals and is not transmitting to/observable by the satellite. https://ciechanow.ski/gps/
> GPS spies on everyone.
That's... not how GPS works.
I think what the commenter meant is that by using the GPS in mobile devices, these devices and their apps report their locations to various other places, including data collectors, which is probably how the US determined there was an Iranian commander at or near the school.
One great thing about the Internet is it lets you see how other people live, if you want to go looking for it. Think about all the things you want in your life: a house to live in, a car to drive, children (maybe), your children being able to get an education safely, good health, time with family and friends and so on.
The point is that Iranian families want all of those things too. Because they're people just like you are. You can see videos of ordinary Iranians going to the market, going to work, having family over, eating a meal together and so on. It saddens and frightens me how easy it seems to dehumanize other people and basically be OK with killing them en masse.
Now I want you to think about what you'd do if you sent your 11 year old daughter to school one day and some foreign government double tapped that school with 2 Tomahawk missiles killing almost 200 people, most of them children.
We kind of do know because it's basically what happened after 9/11. We spent $8T+ on a 20 year war to kill over a million people in vengeance that really didn't do anything else. Remember that Afghanistan offered to hand bin Laden over after 9/11 [1].
The Trump administration tried (badly) lying about what happened. First it never happened. Second, it wasn't us. But nobody else has Tomahawk missiles so that was never going to work.
The only question is where the targeting information came from and what verification was done. I am not convinced that Israel didn't supply this information so the US military would commit atrocities to keep them in a war that Israel had desperately wanted for decades. Every president since Reagan had been begged by Israeli PMs to invade Iran. All of them refused. It's widely believed that Netanyahu threatened to use nukes if Obama wouldn't do it. Obama called his bluff. Until Trump. And here we are.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...
While vacationing in Colorado I was approached by a young man and woman who wanted to tell me about Christianity, towards the end I told them that I do no view Christians in America as good people as group, and gave them various reasons why, the support of Trump being a main reason. Supporting someone so overtly evil while pretending to be righteous and godly was clearly contradictory to me, the whole situation caused me to view religious people not as misinformed but actively disingenuous (those smart enough to know better anyway). He snapped back with "OBAMA BOMBED A SCHOOL"
Which, at the time I thought, yes its bad that US presidents almost all are willing to do war when it isn't a good idea, but Obama isn't the president right now and I think you can expect Trump to bomb some schools too man.
and here we are.
As an side, fuck every single person here that supported or made excuses for the GOP in the last two decades, I will never forgive you.
> "OBAMA BOMBED A SCHOOL"
Obama the Christian?
That's his half brother Obamna, Trump made the same mistake
Christians aren't bad people. Its just that the older ones (and a few young ones) get their information from terrible sources. They watch Fox News, where every day Trump is presented as the hero fighting against the evil democrats. They don't notice the propaganda like a fish doesn't notice water. Bad inputs bad outputs.
Christians aren't bad people, but it's undeniable that the one demographic that supports Trump more than any other are Christians. Trump is the face, heart and soul of American Christianity. Where else are Christians arguing that genocide on behalf of Israel is a moral imperative, or that empathy is a sin?
If so many Christians were so easily swayed by hateful propaganda then that's still a fault and failure of the religion, as is the utter failure of the "good" Christians to do anything about it. People aren't machines that blindly process inputs into outputs, at least not in any useful sense that takes morality and ethics into account. People have agency, they're responsible for their own decisions. And these people have a Bible probably at arms reach at all times and they know what it says.
>"Christians aren't bad people, but it's undeniable that the one demographic that supports Trump more than any other are Christians."
Christianity itself really has little to do with it. I think it's more so that "Christian" is just the default cultural identity and worldview of native born Americans who have zero self awareness, thoughtfulness, or perspective on the world. Almost none of them actually believe anything really when you start to ask questions about it. It's just the in-group that they latch on to because they've never had an independent thought in their lives.
> "Christian" is just the default cultural identity and worldview of native born Americans who have zero self awareness
You people are excellent for irony.
the classic gotcha that doesn't work on outsiders that don't care about the partisan devide. All US presidents going back for quite a while are war criminals.
ECHR, UN and ECJ will find any and everything as crime against humanity so it is best to ignore them and make your own judgement. It is like asking ADL if something is antisemitism or SPLC if something is racism - the answer will always be yes, so why bother.
> ECHR, UN and ECJ will find any and everything as crime against humanity
That doesn't make them automatically wrong. This is clearly a crime against humanity.
> It is like asking ADL if something is antisemitism
There is a huge difference between hating Jews and condemning the actions of the Israeli government in occupied Palestine and the support it has from other countries.
Oh ok, so then how do you qualify this event? As whoopsie? A misclick?
Okay. My own judgement is targeting strikes on an elementary school full of hundreds of school children is a war crime.
Do you not want to see accountability for that? Are you not pro-life?
Of course I want to see accountability. Two valuable and expensive ammunitions were wasted and pilots were exposed to unnecessary risk due to sloppy intelligence work. Also there should be punishment for the civilian deaths I guess. But unless the school was deliberately targeted because it was a school, double taping on military barracks that are attached to a military base shouldn't be looked as a war crime. USG is under no obligation to have up to date information.
>Following the United States and Israeli attacks on 28 February, the mission found reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in the loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects.
The attacks were obviously not indiscriminate. Indiscriminate is covering an area with napalm and throwing a match.
It was clearly a school and deliberately targeted.
You caring more about munitions than the lives of innocent children says a lot about who you are.
Wasn't it right next to a military base, and previously used as part of that military base? And therefore a reasonable part of the targeting list that should've gotten more scrutiny but just didn't?
This feels like someone wanted to slander the US military actions, could only find one unambiguously negative thing, so then they pontificated on that.
I don’t understand your attitude. The slaughter of hundreds of children seems genuinely inherently upsetting and unacceptable to me. I don’t see why an element of negligence would make this something to just “not pontificate on” in a court of law or in public discourse.
As far as I know, yes. However, it was not quite adjacent but rather within the military base.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=27.10983&mlon=57.08475&z...
After first looking at the map, I was quite surprised as it wasn't mentioned in the news.
Why is a school basically located on a military area, and not in a residential area?
> This feels like someone wanted to slander the US military actions, could only find one unambiguously negative thing, so then they pontificated on that.
If a soldier on the ground had called in the airstrike, there is a good chance they would be in military prison.
The fact that the administration itself did it means nothing will happen.
Always know what you're shooting at, especially if it changed purposes over a decade ago.
> If a soldier on the ground had called in the airstrike, there is a good chance they would be in military prison.
No, they wouldn't and neither would they in any other military; most militaries don't punish most war crimes let alone what looks like negligence.
We all know this happened. What I find hilarious in the discussion here is that everyone also knows it was caused by AI replacing humans on the battlefield, but because so many here have deeply conflicted interests they pretend they don’t know and act as though some human somewhere did this intentionally. Greed really corrupts the dialog around military use of AI.
> so many here have deeply conflicted interests
What do you mean by this? I use AI both personally and for work but I'm not conflicted at all about its use for things we generally agree are harmful.
Don’t put schools near military targets. I think it’s common sense if you value children life.
Plenty of schools on American military bases! And a school across the street from the IDF headquarters.
And if you think that America would leave children in that school for longer than 10 minutes after a war was launched against a country hosting such a base or the American mainland if it were under a state of war… well then you are ignorant.
One side values life. The Islamic regime on the other hand has tried to kill me (an Israeli civilian) and has killed tens of thousands of Iranians in January of this year in a few days.