> Accidentally killing a bunch of kids would likely be worth it, morally speaking, if it led to the destruction of the Iranian regime.

It most absolutely is not and I struggle to believe you can build a valid argument that links bombing school children as necessary for the fall of Iran’s government.

How you win a war, especially one as lopsided as this invasion is, is as important as winning. I cannot so easily sleep at night knowing we are committing horrific atrocities during an invasion we chose to launch against a country thousands of miles away with zero military capacity to harm us here at home.

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The US/Israel are far and away the number one terrorist organization in the world, and it's not even close.

Which is why I said I dont think it would be immoral for Iran to launch a bunch of rockets at the US or israel to force regime changes.

But they can’t and don’t lob missiles at the US so to act as if they are is ridiculous. This is not a fight between equal weight classes.

First, this is completely untrue. Hamas and Hezbollah have been launching missiles at Israel literally nonstop for 20 years. The houithis have and will continue to launch missiles at US assets along the Bab al-Mandab Strait. All of these missiles came directly from the iranian regime. Those groups are an arm of the Iranian government

Thats not the point though. There is no reason for either party to respond proportionally in a war. Going to war against an equal weight class as idiocy, sun tzu figured that one out forever ago.

>At the US

So Iran kills untold innocent children and innocents but because they havent yet launched an attack on american soil(they absolutely could) its immoral to stop them from killing more children and innocents? Doesnt make sense to me. Thats before we even get to the major economic damage their terrorist network has caused. The US morally must just sit back while Iran funds and arms the group that routinely shuts down global trade and costs americans billions?

There's literally zero proof that Iran killed any innocent children.

israel is not the US

Most of our politicians seem to think it is, so maybe it was a Freudian slip.

We literally just deployed 5000 troops to Iran after weeks of bombing. We are boots on the ground and our belligerent president literally calls it a war. It is disingenuous to bicker over whether we can call our attack an invasion. If it was happening to us we certainly would call it one.

Hand wavy “that’s war for ya” nonsense isn’t appropriate for a serious discussion of ethics. Especially when discussing bombing a school.

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Killing children in an unprovoked attack to stop somebody else from potentially killing children in the future doesn't seem like a moral take to me, even if "someone else" killed more in the past or will in the future. In particular, because it actually sends the message that it's ok to kill children as long as you get what you want in the end. Not a great precedent. Perhaps that is the root of where your utilitarian morals diverge from some others' morals.

Unfortunately for everyone, now the US and israel killed a bunch of kids, and reinforced that precedent for others with these sorts of flimsy justifications, *and* everything will be the same or worse in Iran, especially for civilians. So lose-lose-lose.

> Even if Israel is mostly responsible for that [conditions in the Gaza region of Palestine] I think conditions will improve if Iran cuts Hamas off.

We can already see the outcome of that in the West Bank region of Palestine: no hamas, yet israel still exercises ultimate control via violence, and keeps oppressing and killing Palestinians and taking or destroying their stuff with impunity, especially as of late.

There's no indication israel would be more generous to Palestinians in the Gaza region of Palestine if hamas wasn't there. Palestinians in Gaza see what israel does to Palestinians in the West Bank, and want no part of it. Who can blame them? It's sick.

Conditions in the west bank are far better than in gaza for what its worth. If all the million kids in gaza got to live in conditions as good as the west bank kids get the bombing would be worth it for that alone.

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> Some children being killed is an inevitable part of war.

Killing children is a war crime, and not an inevitable part of war.

Would you mind sharing a handful of examples where, from your perspective, a war was worth its results?

I guess I'd start with most colonial freedom wars.

I might not know your personal background, but I have a hard time imagining you come from a lineage that has experience the cost of one of those.

The list of today's remaining colonies is short enough[0] that it is worth considering whether decolonization was "an idea that reached its time" in the late 20th century ; and given that there are examples of peaceful revolutions (eg India and West Africa) it is worth asking whether more places could have undergone peaceful transitions, and whether the cost in human lives and atrocities born within a decade of war doesn't outweigh the cost of the colonial system dying by itself within the same order of magnitude of time.

But then again, I think you're veering us somewhat off-topic as I'd consider a "colonial freedom war" to be a revolution (the people overthrowing their overlord) which is quite different from the topic at hand here, war between nation-states.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_list_of_non-sel...

I don’t need to hear deep arguments to be convinced that it’s not ok to kill my children/bomb their school.

Can you answer the question though? It's not a trick question, I want to see where you're coming from.

And it's not about whether it's "okay".