Contributors

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Don't Be So Smug: Or, We've Had Our Own Flight 17...

It's now clear that Russia provided the SA-11 antiaircraft missiles that Ukrainian rebels used to shoot down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, and that Russian troops trained the rebels in the use of the weapons.

Immediately after the missile attack Ukrainian rebels bragged on social media about shooting down a plane. In this now-deleted post Igor Strelkov ("Igor the Gunman") said, "We warned you -- don't fly in 'our skies,'" and "Peaceful people were not injured." Yeah, right.

Rebels were also recorded talking on radios about shooting the plane down.

After the Russians realized their horrible mistake, they took down their gloating posts and brought the weapons back across the border into Russia. The separatists have also been covering up their mistake, taking the bodies of the wounded and and the flight and data recorders, apparently on orders from Moscow. They have been denying access to the crash site to rescue workers. It also appears that the crash site was looted by thieves who stole the victims' credit cards and personal belongings.

So what should happen now? There's actually a precedent for this: several countries have shot down civilian aircraft by mistake. Including the United States.

In 1988 the USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655. The Vincennes was engaged with Iranian gunboats when a radar operator mistook the Airbus A300B2-203 for an F-14A Tomcat fighter jet.  This was during the Iran-Iraq war, and there was a lot of tension in the area: the Iraqis had recently killed 37 Americans aboard the USS Stark (by mistake), and another American frigate had been struck by an Iranian mine.

The Vincennes issued radio challenges to the airliner, but since it was a civilian jet flying on its normal flight path, the pilots had no idea the Vincennes was trying to contact them: they just kept flying. Receiving no response, the Vincennes fired two surface-to-air missiles; one struck the airliner. Everyone aboard was killed.

The United States never admitted fault, but issued a statement of regret and paid $61.8 million in reparations. It was a standard non-apology apology.

Russia can (probably rightly) blame it all on incompetent separatists, but they created the conditions that caused this travesty, so Russia needs to dip into its vast oil profits and pay reparations to the victims. They must also remove their troops from the border, take back all the weapons they've provided the rebels and stop egging on the crazies in eastern Ukraine.

But John McCain has been his usual idiotic war-mongering self, calling the United States "cowardly" for not sending more weapons in the area. Suppose we had sent one of our missile batteries to the Ukrainian government and they were the ones who shot down Flight 17. If we send weapons into Ukraine it will only make the situation worse, creating opportunities for similar accidents that the Russians will proclaim as atrocities against them and theirs, which they'll use as ammunition against us. (We are just so lucky that McCain lost the 2008 election. We would have started 23 more wars by now.)

We should be ratcheting down the violence, not arming everyone to the teeth. If we learned anything from the cold war, it's that arms races only assure mutual destruction. If we want to hurt the Russians where it really hurts, we should treat them like the international pariah and menace to navigation they have become.

If Putin doesn't pull back his troops and stop supporting the terrorists who shot down Flight 17, Russia should be labeled a state sponsor of international terrorism, Russian assets in the United States, Europe and Asia should be seized and we should hit firms that cut oil deals with Russian oligarchs with gigantic fines.

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