EDITORIAL — Collateral damage

If the evidence gathered by CNN is to be believed, the U.S. was responsible for the air attack that killed more than a hundred students in the ShajareTayyiba elementary school in Iran last February 28.

CNN said satellite imagery, geolocated videos, and the assessment of munitions experts suggest the girls’ school was hit around the same time the U.S. attacked the neighboring Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval base.

In war terms this is called collateral damage: the unintended injuries or deaths of civilians or destruction of or damage to civilian property during a military operation.

It’s likely this incident wasn’t deliberate, and that the real target was the naval base. But in a war where the moral high ground still remains unclear, the U.S. should refrain from acts that demonize it.

In times of war, the moral high ground is difficult to assign to any side. But this is easier to determine in cases where one side attacked another lacking sufficient provocation or justification, like in Russia’s war against Ukraine, or Germany invading Poland and other countries in Europe during World War II, or when a country launches genocide against its own people.

But in this war we really can’t say the U.S. had justifiable reasons to attack Iran. Iran has been blamed for sponsoring terrorist organizations and oppressing its own people, but there was no direct and immediate threat to Americans to justify U.S. actions against Iran.

Which makes incidents like these not just tragic but also makes the U.S. lose face.

Why does the moral high ground matter? Because the world, as well as popular opinion, usually sides with and may even eventually gives support to the one that has it. And these days, with how fast information spreads, any country that wages war against another needs popular support to win and hold on to its gains.

That issue aside, we don’t even have to mention what tragedy this incident is in itself; more than a hundred innocent lives gone.

Many Iranians welcome U.S. moves to change the current regime in Iran, but how many of them now curse the U.S. because of what happened and are now willing to take up arms against it?

The U.S. should take more care to lessen collateral damage.