{"id":3400,"date":"2026-03-11T00:00:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T00:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/3400\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T00:00:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T00:00:08","slug":"the-u-s-bombed-an-elementary-school-trumps-response-makes-it-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/3400\/","title":{"rendered":"The U.S. bombed an elementary school. Trump’s response makes it worse."},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for the Slatest<\/a> to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.<\/p>\n

There are many appalling things about the ongoing war in Iran, but one of the worst so far is President Donald Trump\u2019s persistent avoidance of responsibility for the missile attack<\/a> that hit a girls\u2019 school, killing at least 175 Iranians, most of them grade-school children.<\/p>\n

Video footage<\/a> clearly shows the damage was done by a Tomahawk cruise missile. In his press conference Wednesday, Trump said that the Tomahawks are \u201cgeneric\u201d weapons (untrue, they are quite distinctive) and that many countries have some, including Iran (very untrue), suggesting\u2014even stating explicitly\u2014that Iranians themselves might have fired<\/a> the missile.<\/p>\n

There are precedents for how to handle these sorts of incidents. During the war in Afghanistan, when U.S. troops accidentally killed a civilian (a frequent occurrence), they went to the dead person\u2019s family, apologized<\/a>, and gave them some money. In 1999, during the war in Serbia, when U.S. planes mistakenly bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three employees and injuring 20, President Bill Clinton phoned Chinese President Jiang Zemin to apologize<\/a>, stressing that it was an isolated error, not a deliberate attack on China.<\/p>\n

In other words, it is possible\u2014under previous presidents, it has been policy\u2014to admit to making horrific mistakes in wartime, and even to compensate for the damages. A soldier, even a president, can do so without appearing weak or suggesting doubts about the wider war. In fact, refusing to take responsibility raises the possibility that the killings were deliberate. No doubt many Iranians, who have been told for decades that America is Satan, believe that Trump and his airmen deliberately attacked a girls\u2019 school\u2014which will make a peaceful resolution to this war all the more difficult.<\/p>\n

Ten days into this war, it is clearer than ever that when it comes to weighing the ends and means of the conflict (what its goals are, and how much death and destruction he\u2019s willing to inflict to obtain them), Trump is making it up as he goes along.<\/p>\n

In the course of a few hours on Monday, Trump couldn\u2019t maintain a consistent cover story about the war\u2019s broad outlines. In a phone interview with CBS News<\/a>, he said, \u201cI think the war is very complete, pretty much. They have no navy, no communications, they\u2019ve got no air force.\u201d As a result, the U.S. is \u201cvery far\u201d ahead of his initial four-to-five-week estimate of how long the war would last. Because of this remark, oil prices, which had been soaring, plummeted\u2014and the stock market, which had been tanking, recovered much of the day\u2019s losses.<\/p>\n

But not long after, in a press conference<\/a> at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said, \u201cWe\u2019ve already won in many ways, but we haven\u2019t won enough. \u2026 We\u2019ll not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated. \u2026 We could call it a tremendous success right now \u2026 or we could go further. And we\u2019re going to go further.\u201d<\/p>\n

Compounding the confusion, around the same time as Trump\u2019s war-is-almost-over CBS interview, the \u201cDepartment of War Rapid Response<\/a>\u201d account posted on X, \u201cWe have Only Just Begun to Fight,\u201d parroting Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth\u2019s words on CBS\u2019 60 Minutes<\/a>, \u201cThis is only just the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked at the press conference which assessment was right, is the war almost over or just beginning, Trump replied, \u201cWell, I think it could say both<\/a>. The beginning, it\u2019s the beginning of building a new country.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is at best evasive. When it comes to the question that was asked\u2014How is the war going?\u2014it cannot be at the beginning and near the end. And when it comes to building a new country, Trump hasn\u2019t laid out the vaguest vision, except that \u201cthe Iranian people\u201d (all 90 million of them?) should rise up and take over (against the arms of 190,000 Revolutionary Guards?) and that he\u2014Trump\u2014should have a say in picking the new leader.<\/p>\n

In any case, Hegseth<\/a> has said the big difference between Trump\u2019s regime-change policy and that of President George W. Bush in Iraq is that Trump\u2019s doesn\u2019t involve endless, futile efforts at \u201cnation-building.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Fred Kaplan
\n Trump\u2019s Real Plan for Iran Might Be Coming Into View
\n Read More\n <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Analysts, journalists, and pundits who try to parse the Trump administration\u2019s policy in this war should give up. There is no policy. More than that, there\u2019s not really a Trump administration. There is only Trump, his impulses, and the members of his Cabinet who try to keep up with them. For instance, after Trump said the war was almost over, Hegseth tried to walk back<\/a> his comment that it was closer to the start, saying, \u201cIt\u2019s not for me to posit whether it\u2019s the beginning, the middle, or the end. That\u2019s his, and he\u2019ll continue to communicate that.\u201d Hegseth is right on this point, but then why did he posit it to begin with?<\/p>\n

Oh, for the days when a president and his Cabinet held National Security Council meetings to hammer out at least the semblance of a coordinated policy.<\/p>\n

Similarly, last week, Secretary of State (and acting national security adviser) Marco Rubio<\/a> said the goals of the war are to disable Iran\u2019s navy, destroy its ballistic missiles, and make sure it can never build a nuclear weapon. Yet Trump continues to talk about regime change or at least killing the next series of leaders, as long as they don\u2019t meet his standards of acceptability. \u201cWe want a system that can lead to many years of peace,\u201d he said<\/a> at his Monday press conference, \u201cand if we can\u2019t have that, we might as well get it over with right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the Symbol of MAGA Washington. All Is Not As It Seems.
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This Presidential Pitfall Ensnared Wilson, Bush, and Biden. Now Trump\u2019s Falling Into It Too.
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

This seemed to reprise his March 7 post<\/a> on social media: \u201cUnder serious consideration for complete destruction and certain death, because of Iran\u2019s bad behavior, are areas and groups of people that were not considered for targeting up until this moment in time.\u201d<\/p>\n

A president\u2019s words, especially in wartime, should send a signal\u2014to friends, foes, neutral observers, and fellow citizens\u2014of what is desired and what to expect. Trump\u2019s words send a muddle of signals, unleash a flood zone of noise. He doesn\u2019t know what he wants or how to get it, and therefore even if the Iranians or our allies or anybody else wanted to help him, it\u2019s not at all clear what they should say or do.<\/p>\n

And so U.S. and Israeli bombs and missiles keep smashing up stuff and killing people. This is unleashing mayhem, not prosecuting war. As Carl von Clausewitz<\/a> famously put it, war is the continuation of politics by other means. In other words, wars are fought for political ends\u2014and fought in a way designed to bring about those ends. Trump is confusing about both, probably because he doesn\u2019t have a clear idea himself about either.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Sign up for Slate’s evening newsletter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[38,8,19,9,2948,7,36],"class_list":{"0":"post-3400","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-iran","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-slate-plus","13":"tag-top-stories","14":"tag-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116207604354538691","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}