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I feel very bad for the children and their relatives. What happened is really terrible.

I wish there was the same level of rigour and energy applied to investigating the 40,000 deaths in early January. There are countless videos online.

I simply don’t understand why 150 people receive so much attention while 40,000 don’t.

This saddens me because it feels like the focus is on who was responsible rather than who lost their lives.

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Nobody in the western world cares about either group of dead civilians. They only pretend to care because they think it might benefit their preferred tribe of politicians.
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Which makes me even more sad to be honest.
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> I simply don’t understand why 150 people receive so much attention

It's called motherfucking *accountability*

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You conveniently deleted the second part of that sentence.
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I feel like an intellectual god to have been gifted the brain power to recognize that 150 kids being killed is a awful tragedy, and that converting a building on a military base to a school is recklessly stupid and borderline purposely done as a trap. It's like letting your child play in the road at night, and then being upset when a drunk driver hits them.

Anyone can look at the satellite images from the bombing and see how ridiculous whatever Iran was doing was.[1]

[1]https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop...

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"I understand that the officer killed your unarmed teen son. But you have to understand, in the dark, he appeared to be reaching for a weapon, and the officer feared for his life."

"It's a tragedy that she was raped. But you have to understand, the way she was dressed, she clearly wanted it, she was sending mixed signals, you see."

Anyway. Here's a preschool right next to a military base, it took me about 3 minutes of scrolling around on google maps to find this.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/2TP32tYqRZxthSFF8

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And it's clearly labeled as such, right on google maps.

The Navy even provides a map for people potentially targeting to know what is and isn't on base.

https://www.nepa.navy.mil/portals/20/Figure%201%20Letter.png

I'm sure you'll link to where Iran publicly shares the information about the base that was struck, right?

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There are schools on military bases all over the world. Here's one at Joint Base Andrews: https://maps.app.goo.gl/iMm4QSZJYAaLLSLh9

Are the children in that school a legitimate military target? Is putting that school on Joint Base Andrews "recklessly stupid?"

Why is it perfectly fine for the United States to do this but "recklessly stupid" for Iran to do it?

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Because the US military publishes maps of the base. Anyone who bombs a school on a US military base is doing it intentionally. China could probably call up the DoD and ask for maps of every base, and they would get it.

If your force your enemy to decide what is and isn't a civilian target, you are the deranged one.

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I'm just gonna assume you are an American, just because this is a website who's audience is in large part American. But I might be wrong. Anyway, as such you must at least in passing be familiar with the concept of a "military base" as it is practiced by American society.

> Everything that the average family needs is there; a grocery store, shopping mall, bank, post office, theatre, religious centers, outdoor activities, community center, clubs, dining facilities, gas station, quick stop markets, and, if not a full size hospital, medical clinics. The majority of bases do not have schools physically located on the installation, but the children are educated in the neighboring school systems.

src: https://militarybases.com/military-housing/life-on-a-militar...

I just googled that so I don't have to write the text myself.

So while you might be technically correct about schools, do you think housing on a military base for personnel and their families is akin to playing on the road at night ?

> I feel like an intellectual god

HN rules prevent me from writing anything snarky here.

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Yes, you are correct. Military bases even have schools and kids!

But do you know what else the US does?

The locations of military and non-military buildings is public information, and even intentionally made obvious to anyone. You can get maps of the bases from their websites. You can even go on google maps and see what most of the buildings are. To avoid exactly this situation. And even beyond all that, in the event of military escalation where their is real threat of the bases being hit, the civilians would be evacuated anyway.

(Legitimate) countries at war aren't trying to massacre civilians. They all agreed to that and all take agreed upon steps to stop it. Like at the most basic level issuing uniforms to soldiers so you can clearly see who is a civilian and who is a fighter.

I can assure you that in a war between the US and China, there would be dramatically fewer civilian deaths, because both countries don't fuck around with "military/civilian ambiguity" as a war tactic. Because you or your enemy end up killing a bunch of innocents.

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Are you trying to tell me that you believe that the Iranians were under the impression that this school was a secret that the United States did not know about ?

This the the school's website https://web.archive.org/web/20250912011638/https://shajaresc...

Do you believe that these military buildings were a secret that the Iranians thought the US and Israel don't know about ?

> (Legitimate) countries at war aren't trying to massacre civilians.

You think Israel is not a legitimate country? Cause that just very openly happened and continues to happen.

And maybe you think that killing civilians is not the point, which I don't agree with but I can at least understand why one would come to that conclusion.

But you must at least remember that the US is kind of famous for Hiroshima and Nagasaki - an action based almost in it's entirety on killing civilians.

But even if you want to only defend that "legitimate" countries aren't trying to massacre civilians, you must be able to see that the threshold of killing them if they just happen to be in the way is very low.

The Secretary of Defense of the US recently called for removal of all these rules you alluded to

> We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement.

https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4318...

Look at what is happening even with this lose framework you are referring to in place. Do you think if China invaded the US, the US would not do everything it takes to defeat them, even if it means giving up conventional warfare. You think the US forces would give up a strategic advantage that could be gained by taking off their uniform and continue fighting without it ?

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You don't seem aware that Japan armed and trained it's population (Kokumin Giyū Sentōtai), men and women including kids, and mandated them to attack invaders. Another example of deranged theocratic dictatorship. The US doing a land invasion would have almost certainly resulted in far more "civilian" deaths.

Also the Geneva conventions don't apply when fighting an enemy who doesn't abide by them. Its incredibly annoying to fight an enemy that has no problem using ambulances as troop and weapon transports. Or an enemy that refuses to issue uniforms to it's fighters. This isn't even necessarily referring to Israel and Hamas, it was rampant with al qaeda and ISIS.

As for China invading the US? Well Ukraine has managed to keep it above board. It's only these shit head theocratic lunatics that have no problem shoveling civilians into the fire to keep their ass in power. Maybe you aren't aware, but Hamas consoles it's civilians by telling them they are dying for God. Just like Japan trained it's civilians during WWII to die for God (who happened to be the emperor.)

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Source for it being a "trap"? Got some evidence to share?
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There is no source, that's why I said borderline. It's that its so painfully negligent that it almost must be malice.
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Uh no, the onus is always on the one doing the attack FFS what's wrong with you?

You are bending over backwards to shift the blame away from an administration that was utterly negligent and reckless and caused an obvious and expected outcome of having "No rules of engagement"

You don't get to blow up a school and say "But a decade ago it was part of the military base!". That's Russia's SOP

It's stupid, lazy, unacceptable, and indefensible in a war of choice. This administration had years to vet targets, and instead eschewed all preparation and fired the people who had been working on preparation.

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And the Americans walked right into it.

If only anyone in Washington was capable of feeling shame they'd be committing sepuku about now.

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The US maintains over 150 elementary schools on military bases around the world.

Although it does make sense that the land of school shootings would use the children of it's military as bait.

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