Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.

There are many appalling things about the ongoing war in Iran, but one of the worst so far is President Donald Trump’s persistent avoidance of responsibility for the missile attack that hit a girls’ school, killing at least 175 Iranians, most of them grade-school children.

Video footage clearly shows the damage was done by a Tomahawk cruise missile. In his press conference Wednesday, Trump said that the Tomahawks are “generic” weapons (untrue, they are quite distinctive) and that many countries have some, including Iran (very untrue), suggesting—even stating explicitly—that Iranians themselves might have fired the missile.

There are precedents for how to handle these sorts of incidents. During the war in Afghanistan, when U.S. troops accidentally killed a civilian (a frequent occurrence), they went to the dead person’s family, apologized, and gave them some money. In 1999, during the war in Serbia, when U.S. planes mistakenly bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three employees and injuring 20, President Bill Clinton phoned Chinese President Jiang Zemin to apologize, stressing that it was an isolated error, not a deliberate attack on China.

In other words, it is possible—under previous presidents, it has been policy—to admit to making horrific mistakes in wartime, and even to compensate for the damages. A soldier, even a president, can do so without appearing weak or suggesting doubts about the wider war. In fact, refusing to take responsibility raises the possibility that the killings were deliberate. No doubt many Iranians, who have been told for decades that America is Satan,........

© Slate