Are you concerned that your taxes killed dozens of Iranian children? Should we be more concerned about this than we are?

It’s not that I’m against taxes. I’m not thrilled when April 15 rolls around, but let’s face it: Taxation is an essential part of the social compact that makes our nation possible. But once our money goes into the general fund, we don’t have much control over how it’s spent.

Our powerful military is essential, as well. Pacifism is an admirable aspiration, but, alas, the world has always been a dangerous place. The idea that violent, overwhelming force is never necessary is fatally unrealistic.

Still, the destruction of the Shajarah Tayyebeh girls school on the first day of President Donald Trump’s attack on Iran should probably make us all pause a moment to consider the moral implications for our nation and for ourselves.

As many as 180 people were killed by the missile that hit the school, most of them children 7 to 10 years old. The images of the destruction that are generally available through the media are heartbreaking: rows of child-sized body bags, classroom walls painted in the colors children love, backpacks filled with pencils and workbooks, rows of a hundred graves that are now filled with the bodies of children.

But even these sad images are sanitized. Sometimes I wonder if our moral health would be better served if we saw what it actually looks like when a missile explodes in a classroom full of children, or, for that matter, when a shooter with an assault rifle and several 30-round magazines opens fire on schoolchildren here in America. The carnage must be overwhelming and unforgettable.

Unfortunately, the atrocity in Iran is already yesterday’s news.

At least the Trump administration had the self-awareness to be slightly embarrassed by the massacre of the innocents. Trump, true to form, immediately blamed Iran. Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth said that it’s Iran that targets civilians, not America. Administration sources consistently said “the investigation is still ongoing,” which is another way of saying, "Don’t worry about it; people will forget soon enough."

And, indeed, we have. Even after a military investigation determined that the attack against the school was launched by the U.S. military based on outdated targeting information, the incident has faded into little more than a footnote largely buried in the triumphalism of the U.S. attack on Iran.

In fact, sometimes it seems that Trump and Hegseth are enjoying this war just a little too much. They talk as if the attack is the greatest military accomplishment since D-Day.

But is it, really? This war was a mismatch from the start, almost as if an NFL team were scrimmaging a high school B-team. The immediate military outcome of a war built around bombs, rockets and missiles, usually launched from great distances, was never in doubt. (Long-term success in Iran is another matter.)

But the war has other problems. It probably violates international law, and it certainly subverts one of the Founders’ essential principles, the idea that no single man should be able to take the nation to war without a declaration from Congress.

The reasons for launching the war are unclear and questionable. Iran does not appear to have been an imminent threat, and negotiations were ongoing. The goals of the attack were never clearly articulated. The administration doesn’t appear to have given sufficient consideration to the consequences of its attack: the stranding of thousands of travelers in the Middle East, the vulnerability of American installations in the Gulf States, the closing of the Strait of Hormuz.

And the steep rise in gas prices, which are much more likely to get the attention of most Americans than the slaughter of children.

In all this confusion, the question of whether the massacre in an Iranian school was a war crime, a regrettable mistake or just the inevitable collateral damage that occurs in every war is unlikely to be answered.

But here’s a bigger question: How did we let all this happen?

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