To the Editor:
Re “U.S. Is Responsible in School Strike, Early Review Says” (front page, March 12):
The preliminary findings on the American missile strike that destroyed an elementary school in Minab, Iran, killing scores of children, should alarm every American.
We are not fighting wars with crude tools. Agencies like the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency routinely work with satellite imagery that can be minutes or hours old, and high-priority targets are often monitored in near real time. The technology exists precisely to prevent catastrophic errors like this.
Yet according to the investigation, officers relied on outdated targeting data that was not properly verified against current imagery. That is not simply tragic. It represents a breakdown in the most basic safeguards of modern targeting.
War is always brutal, but modern intelligence systems were designed to reduce civilian deaths. When those safeguards fail through negligence and children die as a result, the responsibility cannot be dismissed as a routine mistake. It is incompetence in war approaching the moral territory of a war crime.
Tom Debley
Walnut Creek, Calif.
To the Editor:
The news of the likely fault in the United States’ Tomahawk missile strike on an Iranian elementary school is just the latest example of the cost of the incompetence of the current administration. It displays a lack of understanding, or a lack of care, that human errors — in this case, the military using outdated targeting information — are fully predictable byproducts of going to war.
True military professionals understand that these operations are inherently dangerous, that humans are fallible and make tragic and sometimes deadly mistakes. But the Trump administration’s chain saw approach to driving out experienced personnel has only increased the likelihood of tragedies.
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Finding Fault for the Deadly U.S. Strike on a School in Iran
