"What if I told you that bombing a girl's school was actually not the first time the U.S. killed classroom-sized numbers of Iranian kids? Because decades earlier, U.S. military shot down an Iranian passenger plane and killed 290 people. July 3, 1988, Iran Air Flight 655 takes off from Iran's Bandar Abbas Airport for a short flight to Dubai. Early on, the plane was climbing along its standard route. Below, the U.S. S. Vincennes was passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Seven minutes in, airport controllers hand the crew off. Have a nice flight, they say. 15 seconds later, the U.S. ship fires missiles at the plane. The plane explodes and immediately disintegrates into pieces. 274 passengers, 16 crew members, 254 Iranian people, 13 Emiratis, 10 Indians, six Pakistanis, six Yugoslavians, one Italian, 65 kids, and zero survivors. U.S. officials said the crew thought the plane was an attacking Iranian fighter jet, ignoring warnings and descending rapidly toward the ship. But the plane wasn't descending, it was steadily climbing, still early on its route used by passenger planes every day, and it was broadcasting a civilian signal. On the other hand, it was the U.S. ship that was sailing within Iranian waters, which the U.S. only later admitted. Eight years after the attack, the U.S. agreed to a deal to end the case at the International Court of Justice. They would pay just a little under 62 million dollars to the victims' families and would not admit liability. No one was held accountable. George H.W. Bush, who was vice president at the time, seemed to have very little remorse for the situation. I'll never apologize for the United States of America. Ever. I don't care what the facts are. That attitude is what leads to today, where so many of us have not even heard of this. Something that, for the rest of the world, especially Iran, is unforgettable. There's a fog of impunity in hubris poisoning government, a cockiness that many Americans can feel from the people in charge. This sense that because it hasn't faced consequences before the U.S. thinks, or at least the people in charge, it never will. And that arrogance leads to, at best, more terrible mistakes or at worst, horrific crimes. The U.S. maintained that the attack on Flight 655 was a mistake. Even if it was, it was remarkably reckless. Today, we confront another fatal act. On the first day of its so-called liberating war with Israel against Iran, the U.S. struck a girls' school and killed nearly 200 people, most of whom were little kids. And just like with Israeli strikes of hospitals, tent camps and more, when you ask whether the strike on the girls' school was a mistake or intentional, both answers are troubling. If it was intentional, the moral stakes are self-evident. But if it was a mistake when the most powerful military on Earth, on its very first day of another new war, killed more than 100 little girls, how much can you trust it on other military actions, or really, on anything at all?"