In war, innocent people always die.
And now we have seen it again.
A few days ago, we wrote an editorial expressing gratitude that no American lives were lost in Iran’s airstrikes on U.S. forces early Wednesday in the wake of President Donald Trump’s decision to kill Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
But now we have learned that the lives of completely innocent people from seven other countries — 176 lives to be exact — likely were lost to the fog of war.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday became the latest world leader to blame the crash of the Ukrainian jet outside Tehran on one of the Iranian missiles launched during the attack to avenge Soleimani’s death. Once an investigation is complete, Pompeo said he is “confident that we and the world will take appropriate action as a response.”
Our questions to Pompeo are these: Shouldn’t we be taking “appropriate action” against ourselves as well? Aren’t we indirectly to blame for the loss of these civilian lives?
Yes, we know Soleimani fomented violence in the Middle East and was responsible for hundreds of American deaths. But the Trump administration has yet to present a convincing argument that the general had to be killed to stop an immediate threat to our nation.
On Friday on Fox News, where nobody’s about to ask a tough question, Trump said that Soleimani was plotting attacks on four U.S. embassies.
We don’t buy it. Had Iran launched such attacks, it would have invited all-out war, which its tepid retaliation for the general’s killings — harming nobody in missile attacks on two military bases in Iraq — shows it has no stomach for.
Iran found a way to avoid war even after the United States killed Soleimani. Clearly it was not about to attack four American embassies before then.
The whole thing sickens and saddens us. As we see it, the lesson of the last week is that the Trump administration was wildly irresponsible in deciding to kill Soleimani at this time, however reprehensible the general was. And to talk about retaliation again — for Iran’s shooting down of the Ukrainian jet plane — is hypocritical and absurd.
According to the BBC, the 176 victims included 82 Iranians, 63 Canadians, 11 Ukrainians, 10 Swedes, four Afghans, three Britons and three Germans.
When there’s war, the whole world loses.
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