One other note I forgot to add to today’s Morning Jolt about the notion that the United States is somehow to blame or ultimately responsible for the Iranian military shooting down a passenger jet: Some of the people most eager to make this current accusation had little or nothing to say about the civilian casualties of the drone-strike program of the previous administration — an estimated 384 to 807 civilians in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, according to reports logged by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.


Civilian casualties are a horror, and the U.S. military must always take serious precautions to avoid them. But they are more or less inevitable, particularly when fighting an enemy that does not wear uniforms, hides among civilians, and does not operate on established military bases.

But to many partisans, civilian casualties are more serious or less serious depending upon whether they occur under a president they prefer. The current controversy represents an absurd extension of moral culpability, where the United States is not only responsible for civilians killed by their actions, but we are also responsible for those killed by our enemies’ actions.