It would be an understatement to say the U.S. government behaved without integrity surrounding the army’s bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan.

Initial reports stated the bombing left 12 medical staff and at least 10 patients dead; three among the dead were children. Just under 40 others — all of them Afghan civilians — were wounded. As further details emerged, it became apparent that not only were the perpetrators of such a disgusting act none other than ourselves, the do-no-wrong Americans, but also that the bombs had continued to rain down for half an hour even after Washington received intelligence that the hospital had been hit.

U.S. officials were quick to try and point their fingers anywhere but at themselves, first calling the bombing of the hospital “collateral damage,” then just a tragedy, before claiming that the American strikes were in response to Afghan forces’ request for help against Taliban insurgents.

As if committing what is in essence a war crime and then attempting to avoid the blame wasn’t bad enough, media coverage of the bombing only further compounded the atrocious nature of what occurred. The media scurried to follow the cues of American government officials. Rather than accept the fact that our record is not nearly as spotless as we would like to pretend it is, The New York Times ran a piece in Sunday’s print edition with the headline “U.S. Is Blamed After Bombs Hit Afghan Hospital,” suggesting that there was some sort of mistake in the midst of all the finger-pointing. The same piece was also published online, with the slightly improved but still exculpating and ambiguous headline, “Airstrike Hits Doctors Without Borders Hospital in Afghanistan.”

This story is enough to churn stomachs as is, but one of the most tragic parts of the bombing is that it’s not by any means an isolated incident. The average estimate lies between 476 and 1,100 civilian deaths by drone strike in the past decade alone — and that’s without getting into the gray area that is classification of “civilian” vs. “combatant.” As The New York Times reported in 2012, any military-age males in a strike zone are considered combatants whether they are actually included in any military operations or are not even remotely involved, hence the difficulty to find concrete numbers.

Our leaders, our media and the American public as a whole have already forgotten that first lesson of integrity: We cannot continue to use carefully constructed rhetoric to avoid situations in which we are to blame rather than accept responsibility for our actions. We have remained stubbornly unwilling to accept due blame on the issue of drone strikes for far too long. Just as it took the image of the body of Aylan Kurdi, who drowned escaping war, for us to temporarily open our eyes to the horrors engulfing Syria before we quickly forgot about the situation, it has taken the bombing of a humanitarian hospital for us to question whether we as a nation are engaging in ethical warfare. With this precedent in mind, one has to wonder how many more innocent deaths it will take before we finally perfect our foreign policy.

Coverage of this tragedy — and the sheer lack of coverage of ongoing similar deaths — should serve as a lesson for not just the social policy, political science and journalism students in our midst, but for all of us.

Sumaia Masoom is a SESP sophomore. She can be reached at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this column, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected].

The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.