What people don’t seem to understand is the word “targeted”.

They see some obviously civilian target in ruins with screaming parents outside and they have an instant visceral emotional reaction: “What kind of monster would do something like this on purpose!?”

Practically nobody targets civilian building with expensive precision munitions! They’re expensive! There’s limited supply! Targets are chosen to maximise the military effect.

The problem is that the victims and journalists have “boots on the ground”. They’re right there and can clearly see the civilian nature of the target with their own eyes.

The person doing the targeting from som bunker thousands of miles away can see only blurry rectangles on an outdated map, has sparse intelligence reports, and targets coordinates. They’re not walking up to the missile like it’s some sort of intelligent war animal and whispering “kill civilians!” in its ear.

Similarly, they’re not on the ground standing outside the civilian target waving the missile in with light sticks like some airport tarmac staff.

I repeat: they’re thousands of miles away and have to target hundreds of buildings that all look the same-ish from space and aren’t magically labelled by God as “no longer valid under the Geneva conventions” or whatever.

I’m not saying that this makes war good or in any way ethical, but you can see how a mistake is made that doesn’t require cartoonish evil people to explain.