Misfired

At the risk of coming across as flippant, I'm going to quote Superman, from the DC Comics series Kingdom Come. "You can't have a war," the Man of Steel said to Wonder Woman, "without people dying." To which most people, I expect, would respond with something along the lines of: "That, we knew already." People generally understand the nature of war. While it might not be true that "War never changes," there are certain things that tend to be constants; like casualties.

After the first three deaths were reported, Trump told NBC News on Sunday: “We have three, but we expect casualties, but in the end it’s going to be a great deal for the world.”
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Then in a video posted to social media the same day, he again seemed to ask for people’s understanding about the subject.

“And sadly, there will likely be more [deaths] before it ends,” Trump said, before adding: “That’s the way it is. Likely be more.”

He then added: “But we’ll do everything possible where that won’t be the case.”
Trump’s and Hegseth’s awkward comments about US troop deaths in Iran war

But another constant is the deaths of non-combatant civilians.

Speaking aboard Air Force One on Saturday, President Trump accused Iran of being responsible for the school bombing.

"Based on what I've seen, I think it was done by Iran," Trump said. "Because they're very, inaccurate as you know, with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran."
Video appears to show U.S. cruise missile striking Iranian school compound

On the one hand, I understand the President's looking to shift the blame. After all, he's been pushing a narrative of the United States being the unambiguous Good Guys in this conflict, even if looks like, once again, President Trump using the military to go after a nation that no-one else is close enough to that they'd be willing to stand up for them, and that doesn't have the wherewithal to fight back in kind.

But on the other hand, there's nothing new or unusual about inaccurate or outdated intelligence, or weapons not being quite as "precision guided" as they're advertised as being. People die in wars. And sometimes, they're people that everyone would rather had not been killed. The history of war is littered with people who has the misfortune of happening to be somewhere that a weapon also happened to be, but who weren't the intended, or presumed, targets of that weapon. Why would anyone expect this particular war to be any different?

It's reasonable for people in the United States to want their nation to have clean hands. It's less reasonable to expect that a war being fought mainly with long-distance weapons is going to result in clean hands. And if the President wants to keep American casualties to a bare minimum, then the United States is going to have to do much of its fighting from a distance. And the more that the war relies on hitting targets from a long way away, the more it relies on reports of what's where and who's who, the more that there are going to be times when a bomb, or a missile or whatever hits someone that it wouldn't if someone had realized precisely who was in the line of fire. The Commander-In-Chief, off all people, should be prepared to own up to that.